Count the number of words in a document

Some of the content in this topic may not be applicable to some languages.

Microsoft Office Word counts the number of words in a document while you type. Office Word can also count the following:

• Pages
• Paragraphs
• Lines
• Characters, either including or excluding the spaces

Although the footnotes and text in text boxes aren't automatically counted, you can set up Office Word to count them.What do you want to do?

Count the words as you type

Count the words in a selection or selections

Include footnotes and endnotes in the word count

Count the words in a text box

View the number of pages, characters, paragraphs, and lines

Count the words as you type

When you type in a document, Office Word automatically counts the number of pages and words in your document and displays them on the status bar at the bottom of the workspace .

Count the words in a selection or selections

You can count the number of words in a selection or selections, rather than all of the words in a document. The selections don't need to be next to each other for you to count them.

• Select the text that you want to count.

  The status bar displays the number of words in the selection. For example, 100/1440 means that the section accounts for 100 words of the total number of words in the document, 1,440.

  Tip To select sections of text that aren't next to each other, select the first section, and then hold down CTRL and select additional sections.

Include footnotes and endnotes in the word count

1. On the Review tab, in the Proofing group, click Word Count.

   

2. In the Word Count dialog box, select the Include textboxes, footnotes and endnotes check box.

Count the words in a text box

• Select the text in the text box.

  The status bar displays the number of words in the text box. For example, 100/1440 means that the text box contains 100 words of the total number of words in the document, 1,440.

• To count the words in multiple text boxes, press and hold CTRL while you select the text in each text box that you want to count. The word count automatically adds the total number of selected words in the text boxes.

View the number of pages, characters, paragraphs, and lines

You can view the number of pages, paragraphs, and lines in your document, as well as the number of characters, either including or excluding spaces.

• On the Review tab, in the Proofing group, click Word Count.