Document with word count

View the word count and other information in your document. Learn how to insert and update the word count in to the body of your document.

Show the word count

  • To see the number of words in your document, look at the status bar at the lower left bottom of the Word window.

Find word count statistics

Click on the word count in the status bar to see the number of characters, lines, and paragraphs in your document.

Insert the word count in your document

  1. Click in your document where you want the word count to appear.

  2. Click Insert > Quick Parts > Field.

  3. In the Field nameslist, click NumWords, and then click OK.

  4. To update the word count, right-click the number, and then choose Update Field.

Want more?

Show word count

I am working on a Word document for a school assignment, and I don’t need to write more than 1,000 words.

Luckily, Word 2013 provides a few handy word counting features that will help me keep below my word limit.

As I work on my document, I can keep an eye on my word count on the status bar, down in the lower left corner of the Word window.

If you don’t see the word count in your document, right-click anywhere on the status bar to bring up this menu, and then click Word Count.

As I type, or remove text in my document, the Word Count updates automatically.

And if I click the Word Count in the status bar, a box appears giving me even more detail, including the number of characters and the number of lines that my document contains.

I don’t want to include my document’s footnotes in my total word count, so I’ll uncheck this box.

This section of my document can’t be more than a third of the total document length. To check the length, I select the paragraphs in this section, and the status bar shows the number of words in my selected text.

It looks like I have 205 words in my selected text, out of a total of 968 words, so I am still below my target.

I want to insert the word count in my document, so my teacher can see it when I hand-in my paper.

I click in my document where I want the word count to appear.

In the ribbon, on the INSERT tab, I click Quick Parts, and then click Field.

I select NumWords in the list of Field names, and then click OK.

If I make changes to the document, the word count won’t update automatically. To update it, I’ll right-click the Word Count, and choose Update Field.

To make sure that the latest word count appears when I print my document, I click FILE and then Options.

In the left panel, I click Display, and then under Printing options, I select Update fields before printing.

For more information about word counts, see the course summary.


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Are you looking for an easy way to check the word count in your Microsoft Word document? Word has an easy-to-use, built-in tool that keeps track of your word count in each of its versions, including desktop, mobile or online. This wikiHow article will teach you how to view the word count for a section of text or your entire document in Microsoft Word.

  1. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 1

    1

    Launch Microsoft Word. This can be done by double clicking on the Word icon on your desktop, in your Taskbar (Windows) or Dock (Mac). If you don’t see an icon, click on the ‘Start» menu in the lower left of your PC’s screen. Click on the ‘All Programs» drop down and select Microsoft Word.[1]

    • On Mac, click on the Launchpad (a gray rocketship) icon in your dock. Type ‘Word’ in the search bar at the top of the screen.
  2. Image titled Convert a Microsoft Word Document to PDF Format Step 16

    2

    Navigate to an existing document. To open a document, go to the File menu, and then click on Open. A dialog box will appear with a list of available documents.[2]

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    Select a document. In the dialog box, navigate to the document you wish to open. Select the document, and once it’s highlighted, click on Open in the lower right of the dialog box.

  4. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 4

    4

    Select Tools. Once your document is open, select the Tools menu at the top center of the window.[3]

    • This step only applies to a MAC OS.
  5. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 5

    5

    Scroll to Word Count. In the Tools menu dropdown, click on «Word Count.»

    • If you’re not using a Mac, you won’t see any Tools heading at the top. In this case, go to the Review tab at the top of your document. Once there, you’ll see «Word Count» on the left-hand side of the section.
  6. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 6

    6

    Review your word count. A box will open displaying the number of words, as well as the number of characters, paragraphs, lines and pages, contained in your document.

    • In many documents, the word count is displayed live on the left side of the bottom bar of the document window. Click on this word count to get additional information, such as the number of pages and characters.
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  1. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 7

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    Place your cursor at the beginning of the text you wish to count. Click on the beginning of the sentence, paragraph or section of text for which you want a word count.

  2. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 8

    2

    Highlight the section of text. Drag your cursor to the end of the text section, which should now be highlighted in blue.

  3. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 9

    3

    Click on the Tools menu. Select the Tools menu at the top center of the document window.

  4. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 10

    4

    Click on Word Count. Select Word Count from the Tools menu dropdown. A box displaying the number of words, characters, lines, pages and paragraphs will appear on the screen.

    • The word count for a selected portion of text will usually be displayed in the bottom bar of your document.
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  1. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 11

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    Launch the Microsoft Word mobile app. On your smartphone or tablet, tap on the Word app to launch it.

  2. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 12

    2

    Open a document. The app will usually open the last document you were working on. If not, you will see a list of recently-opened files. Tap on the file you wish to work on.

  3. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 13

    3

    Tap the Edit menu. Once your document is open, tap on the Edit menu (a capital «A» with a pencil icon) on top center of your screen. The Edit menu will open in the bottom half of your screen.

    • In Word for iPad, simply tap on the «Review» menu at the top center of the tablet’s screen.
  4. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 14

    4

    Tap on «Home.» Home is located on the left side of the Edit menu bar. This will open a pop-up menu.

  5. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 15

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    Tap on «Review.» The Review menu is near the bottom of the Edit menu pop-up.

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    Tap on «Word Count.» Word Count is near the bottom of the Review menu. When you tap it, the number of words, characters and pages in your document will be displayed.

    • In Word for iPad, word count is an icon, several lines with the numbers «123» displayed in the upper left, in the main menu bar under the Review menu.
    • Highlight a section of text by tapping on it with your fingers, then tap on Word Count to display the number of words in the highlighted portion of your document.
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  1. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 17

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    Launch Word online. Navigate to office.live.com and log in with your Microsoft ID and password or choose to use the free version.

  2. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 18

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    Open a document. On the left side of your screen, select a recent document.

    • If you don’t see the document you want to edit, select Open from One Drive or Open from Dropbox in the lower left corner of the window.
  3. Image titled Check a Word Count in Microsoft Word Step 19

    3

    Review the word count. Once you have an open document, check the bottom left, side of the document. The word count automatically appears in the lower scroll bar.

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Add New Question

  • Question

    How do I select the area to word count in Word 2016?

    Community Answer

    Highlight the passage; it should show the word count.

  • Question

    When I am in the header area, Word will not show me a word count. What can I do?

    Community Answer

    Select all of the words in the header and the word count for the words you highlighted will be displayed in the word count box on the status bar.

  • Question

    I don’t see Word Count in the lower left corner. Why not?

    Community Answer

    Right click on the status bar and click on «Word Count» so that it has a tick next to it.

See more answers

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  • On Word for PC/Mac, make sure the Microsoft Word window is fully maximized. Otherwise, the window can be moved within your viewable area, and the Word Count in the lower portion of the document could be hidden.

  • To ensure the word count is always visible in your documents, select View from the Preferences menu in the upper left corner of your Mac or PC. The check the box to the left of «Live Word Count.»

Thanks for submitting a tip for review!

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About This Article

Article SummaryX

1. Open the document.
2. Find the word count at the bottom-left corner.
3. Click the word count for more info.
4. Highlight a section to see the word count for that section.

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Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 918,954 times.

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Microsoft Word includes a word counter that lets you track the number of words that you’ve typed in your documents. It’s really useful when you work on documents that require a certain number of words or have a certain word limit. This word count in Microsoft Word helps count characters as well.

There are various ways to access the word count in Word. You can use the status bar, open the word count window, and even add the live word counter as a field to your document. You can view the word and character count in Word online as well.

View The Word Count As You Type In Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word has a real-time word counter that counts the words as you type in your document and lets you view them in the status bar. You don’t need to open any menus or windows to access it.

This comes in handy when you want a live tracker to count the words that you type in your file.

  1. Open Word from the Start Menu on your computer.
  1. Either start a new document or open your existing document to see the word count.
  2. At the bottom-left corner of your screen, you’ll see the count of your words. It displays the total number of words that are there in all the pages of your current open document.
  1. In case you don’t see the word count, right-click the status bar at the bottom of your screen and choose the Word Count option. This’ll add the word counter to the status bar.

Find Count For The Selected Words

If you have a large Word document and you only want to find the word count in Word for select text, you can do that as well using the same word counter feature.

This’ll work for all the pages in your current document but not for multiple Word documents. You need to count words for multiple documents separately using this method.

  1. Right-click on your Word document, select Open with, and choose Word.
  1. Select the text that you want to find the word count for. You can select as many blocks of text as you want in any pages of the document.
  2. Take a look at the status bar in the bottom and it’ll say XX of YY words. XX is the word count for the selected text and YY is the total number of words in your document.

View Character & Word Count With More Details

By default, the status bar only shows a limited number of information such as your word and characters count. If you want to access more details like the number of pages and paragraphs, character count with and without spaces, then you’ll need to open the Word Count box.

This box opens from within Word on your computer.

  1. Open your document in Word on your machine.
  2. Find the tab that says Review at the top and click it.
  3. Locate the section that says Proofing and click the Word Count option in it.
  1. A small box will open on your screen letting you view the word count and other details for your document.
  1. You can deselect the Include textboxes, footnotes and endnotes option if you don’t want to include them in your word count.
  2. Click Close when you’ve finished viewing the word count.

Add a Word Count To Your Document

Word lets you display the word count as a field in your document. This allows you to show the word count anywhere you want in your document. The count will appear as a normal text and you can apply your formattings and styles to it if you want.

  1. Open your document in Word.
  2. Place the cursor where you want to display the word count.
  3. Click the menu item that says Insert at the top.
  1. Find the section that says Text and click the Quick Parts option in it.
  1. Choose Field from the options available on your screen.
  1. On the left-hand side, you’ll see a list of fields that you can add to your document. Find the field that says NumWords, select it, and click the OK button at the bottom.
  1. The word count will appear at your chosen location in your document.
  2. When you add new words to the document, you’ll need to manually update the word count. To do this, right-click on the word count in your document and choose Update Field.

View The Word Count In Microsoft Word Online

If you use the online version of Microsoft Office, you also have the word count feature in Word online. You can access it pretty much the same way as the desktop version.

  1. Head to the Office website and log-in to your account to access the Office apps.
  2. Either create a new document or edit an existing one.
  3. Click the Review tab in the top menu bar.
  1. Click the Word Count option to view the number of words in your current document.

Add a Word Count To The Status Bar In MS Word Online

You can display the live word count in the status bar in the Office online version as well. This only requires you to enable an option in Word online.

  1. Open your document in Word online.
  2. Click the Review tab at the top.
  1. Click the down arrow icon next to Word Count.
  1. Tick-mark the Show Word Count option.
  1. You’ll see the current word count in the status bar at the bottom of your screen.

What To Do If The Word Count In Word Doesn’t Work

If the word count doesn’t automatically update in the status bar or if the counter dims every now and then, there are a few things you can do to fix these issues.

Reboot Your Computer

Turning your computer off and then back on should fix the issue where the word counter doesn’t refresh on its own.

Disable & Enable The Word Count

You can try disabling the word count and then enabling it to see if that fixes the problem where the counter dims every now and then.

  1. Right-click on the status bar in Word and untick Word Count.
  1. Right-click on the status bar again and tick-mark Word Count.

If you want to count words for multiple documents, you can merge your documents together and Word will show the word count for all your documents.

View Word Count in Microsoft Word Documents

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated May 10, 2022

Applies to: Microsoft® Word® 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021 or 365 (Windows)

You can view word count in Word documents in several ways. Although word count is typically displayed in the Status Bar, you can view a Word Count dialog box which can be displayed using the Ribbon, the Status Bar or a keyboard shortcut. The Word counter will check a document for the number of characters, lines, paragraphs and pages. Word count and other statistics are also available in Word Properties.

The Word Count dialog box shows the number of pages, words, characters (with and without spaces), paragraphs and lines in your document. The dialog box displays counts for the current selection.

Recommended article: How to Quickly Remove Hard Returns in Word Documents

Do you want to learn more about Microsoft Word? Check out our virtual classroom or in-person Word courses >

To select the entire document, press Ctrl + A (although total count appears if you simply click in text). You can also triple-click in a paragraph or click at the beginning of a selection and Shift-click at the end of a selection. If you want to select non-adjacent or non-contiguous sections of text, press Ctrl and drag over areas of text. There are many other great ways to quickly select text in Word. Check out the article 14+ Word Selection Shortcuts to Quickly Select Text.

Note that screenshots in this article are from Word 365 but are very similar in Word 2013, 2016 and 2019.

The Word Count dialog box appears as follows (depending on the selection):

Word count dialog box in Microsoft Word to view word, character, page and paragraph count.

In the Word Count dialog box, you can turn a check box off or on to include text boxes, footnotes and endnotes in the word count. This is typically left unchecked. The number of lines in the Word Count dialog box represents the number of lines with characters, not the number of sentences. The number of lines in a document will be affected by formatting such as font size and indents.

Vword count in the Status Bar

When you select text, word count for the selected text should appear in the Status Bar on the bottom left of your screen automatically:

View Word count in status bar in a MIcrosoft Word document.

If no text is selected, the count shows the total for the entire document.

If you double-click the word count in the Status Bar, the Word Count dialog box appears.

Although word count typically displays by default in the Status Bar, you can choose options to display. If you right-click in the Status Bar, a pop-up menu appears. If Word Count has been deselected in this menu, it will not appear in the Status Bar.

Check word count using the Ribbon

To check word count using the Ribbon:

  1. Click the Review tab in the Ribbon.
  2. Click Word Count in the Proofing group. The Word Count dialog box appears.
  3. Click Close.

Word Count appears on the Review tab in the Ribbon:

View Word count in the Proofing group on the Review tab in the Ribbon in MIcrosoft Word.

Check word count using a keyboard shortcut

You can also display the Word Count dialog box by pressing Ctrl + Shift + G.

View word count in document statistics

Word, character, line, paragraph and page count can also be viewed in document statistics or Properties.

To view word count in document statistics or Properties:

  1. Open the Word file.
  2. Click the File tab in the Ribbon.
  3. Select Info.
  4. In the area on the right, under Properties, several statistics appear including word count.
  5. To view more information, click Properties. A drop-down menu appears.
  6. Select Advanced Properties. A dialog box appears.
  7. Click the Statistics tab to view statistics.
  8. Click OK.

When you click File and then Info, statistics appear on the right side of the dialog below Properties:

Document properties in Word to view word count and page count.

The statistics that appear in this area and in the Advanced Properties are for the entire document, not the selected text.

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Displaying Word Count in Microsoft Word

View Word and character counts in a document

Updated on October 12, 2021

You may need to know how many words are in your Microsoft Word document for a school or work assignment or to meet publishing requirements for a blog post or other document. Microsoft Word counts the words as you type and displays this information in a simple form in the status bar at the bottom of the document window. For expanded statistics on character count, paragraphs, and other information, open the Word Count window.

Instructions in this article apply to Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2021, Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, Word 2010, and Word 2016 for Mac.

Word Count in Word for PCs

The status bar displays how many words are in a document without requiring you to open another window. If you don’t see the word count in the status bar, right-click the status bar and choose Word Count to display the word count.

Count Selected Text in Word for PCs

You can also count the number of words in part of a document. To view how many words are in a sentence or a paragraph in the Word versions for PCs, select the text. The word count of the selected text displays in the status bar at the bottom of the document.

To count the words in several text boxes at the same time, press and hold Ctrl while you make the text selections.

How to Open the Word Count Window

When you need more than a word count, additional information is available in the Word Count window. To open the Word Count window in all versions of Word, go to the status bar and select the word count. The Word Count Window contains information on the number of:

  • Pages
  • Words
  • Characters, not counting spaces
  • Characters, with spaces
  • Paragraphs
  • Lines

Place a checkmark in the box next to Include Textboxes, Footnotes, and Endnotes if you want them included in the count.

  1. Select the text you want to count.

  2. Select the Review tab.

  3. In the Proofing group, select Word Count.

Word Count in Word for Mac

In Word for Mac, select the word count in the status bar. This displays the number of words, characters, lines, and more. The status bar displays the word count of the entire document unless you select a part of the text. In this case, the count for the selected text displays.

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