How to Count Words in Word? And Know Additional Details
(Note: This guide on how to count words in Word is suitable for all MS Word versions including Office 365)
Microsoft Word is an ideal tool for creating documents, writing blogs, newsletters, and journals, and creating content. When you do so, Microsoft Word has some functionalities of its own to give you the best experience.
When writing a document, it is essential to know the word count because some pieces of content might have a word limit, and exceeding them will not help attain the article’s purpose. Enabling the word count will help ascertain how many words you have written so far and how many words you will have to write further.
In this article, you will learn how to count words in Word.
You’ll Learn:
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How to Count Words in Word?
From the Status Bar
When you are typing in the Word page or copying and pasting onto the page, Microsoft Word easily enables you to see the word count from the status bar without any clicks or typing any function.
The Microsoft Word status bar lies at the bottom of the Word window. In the status bar, you can see the accessibility status, change the layout, zoom in and out of the page, and most importantly, see the word count.
As you keep adding or deleting content, you can see the number of words shown in the status bar changes dynamically.
Enable and Disable the Word Count Feature
In some cases, you might not see the word count in the Status bar. In other cases, you might feel the presence of the word count is a hindrance to your productivity. In those instances, you can easily disable the dynamic word count feature so it does not show up in the Status bar anymore.
- To disable the word count feature, right-click on the status bar. This opens a Customize Status Bar pop-up.
- In the pop-up, uncheck the checkbox for the Word Count.
- This instantly removes the dynamic word count from the status bar.
If you want to see the word count in the status bar again, you can right-click on the status bar and check the Word count option.
- You can also use this method if you want to know the character count in the whole document. Right-click on the Status bar and check the Character Count (with spaces) option.
This instantly shows you the total number of characters in the whole Word document.
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Know Additional Details
The word count and character count are important details to know when you are writing a document. There are some additional stats that you can know about the document apart from the word and character count.
- To know them, first, open the Word file.
- Navigate to the Review main menu. Under the Proofing section, click on the Word Count option.
- This opens the Word Count dialog box. You can find the page, word, character (with and without space), paragraph, and line count.
- Additionally, you can check the checkbox below to include the count of the text from textboxes, footnotes, and endnotes in the document.
- Click on Close to close the Word Count dialog box.
Note: Instead of clicking and navigating between tabs to see the word count, you can easily enable the Word Count dialog box using the keyboard shortcut. Press the Ctrl + Shift + G keys to instantly enable the Word Count dialog box.
Find the Word Count of Selected Text
When you use the Status bar or the Word Count dialog box to see the word count, it shows the count of the whole document.
But in some cases, you will only want to know the word count or additional statistics of a particular selection.
- To know the word count of the data selection, first, select the data. You can either click and drag the text you want or use the Shift key to select the text.
- Once you select the text, you can see the number of words selected of the total words in the document in the Status bar.
If you have enabled the character count from the Customize Status Bar pop-up, you can also see the character count in the same format as the word count.
Add the Word Count in the Document
The above methods to see the number of words or characters are only limited to the application and they don’t appear when the file is opened out of the application or when they are printed.
This would be necessary in case of some professional and legal documents where there might be a need for you to showcase the number of words in the document itself.
One way to add the word count is to know the word count from the Status bar and then manually update the number of words in the document.
However, there is an easy method to do so.
- First, open the Word document. Type any relevant text and place your cursor in the place where you want to insert the word count in the document.
- Navigate to Insert. Under the Text section, click on the dropdown from Quick Parts and select Field.
- This opens the Field dialog box. In the Categories, make sure the dropdown is set to (All). Scroll down and click on NumWords. Check the checkbox for ‘Preserve formatting during updates’ if you want to keep the same formatting after you click on Update Field.
- You can change the number formatting from the field properties depending on your preference. If you have no preference, select none.
- Click OK.
- Now, the total number of words appears in the place where we have placed the cursor.
- You can then go add or delete the content in the document as you wish.
But, you can see the word count in the document has not changed. To change the word count value, right-click on it and select Update Field.
- This instantly changes the existing word count to the current word count.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How to know the additional details about the document other than the word count?
To know additional details about the document, go to the Review main menu. Under the Proofing section, click on Word Count. This opens the Word Count dialog box. In this dialog box, you can find the page, word, character (with and without space), paragraph, and line count of the document.
Why can’t I see the word count in Microsoft Word?
By default, Microsoft Word shows the total word count of the document or the word count of the selected words in the Status bar. If you cannot see the word count, right-click on the Status bar and click on the Word Count option. If a tick mark appears beside the Word Count option, you can see the word count from the status bar.
What is the easiest way to enable the Word Count dialog box?
One of the easiest and instant ways to enable the Word Count dialog box is by using the keyboard shortcut keys. Press the Ctrl + Shift + G key to instantly enable the Word Count dialog box.
Closing Thoughts
Word count shows you the number of words you have in the document. You can also see the number of selected words when you make any selections. This will be helpful when you curate data for professional or academic purposes.
In this article, we saw how to count words in Word. We also saw how to enable or disable them, know additional details from the Word Count dialog box, and add the word count to the document.
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Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
