Word Count in Microsoft Word
Have you ever needed to get the word, page, paragraph or line count in an MS Word Document? Below are some examples of how to count the words in any amount of selected text including a sentence, paragraph or entire document. In this example I have a sample document with some generic filler text. Students who need to create an essay of 1000 words (for example) may find this helpful.
Counting words for an entire document
To count words in an entire document you have several options. The easiest is to click on the REVIEW tab then in the Proofing Icon Group click on the Word Count icon.
This will bring up a small popup box with some useful word count statistics including Pages, Words, Characters, Paragraphs and Lines.
Another option to get the total number of words is to look at the bottom left of the MS Word window and you will see the count of words in the full document.
Word Count for a single paragraph
First lets select the entire paragraph we would like get the word count for. The easiest way to do this is to Triple Click a word inside the desired paragraph. Triple Clicking the word will select the entire paragraph. You can also use the click and drag method to highlight the paragraph if you prefer.
With the paragraph selected you can simple look at the bottom left of the MS Word window and you will see the count of the selected words as well as the count of words on the whole document.
Counting words for selected text
This works very similar to a single paragraph. You can click and drag to highlight any amount of text. Then look at the bottom left of MS Word. You will see the count of words for the selected text. Using the REVIEW tab then using the Word Count icon in the Proofing icon group will also bring up the same popup windows with the stats for the selected text.
View some of our other Word Tips and Tricks. Please leave comments below with questions or other MS Word tips you would like to see.
Microsoft has some Office 365 training at the link below. It is separated into sections for IT Pros, Small Businesses and End Users. Have a look.
Good tips to help those better understand Microsoft Word! It’s amazing to see just how many little secrets this program has packed in and how much there is to learn as well.