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How to Find Word Count on Word

Do you find the need to keep track of your Word Count on Word?

Most authors need to know how many words they’ve written so far.

Word count is a common activity among writers, and Microsoft Word does the counting job for you automatically.

Now let me show you how to find the number of words your document has.

Find Word count on Word’s Status Bar

Word's Status Bar

The status bar is very useful when it comes to statistics for your Word document.

By default, you can see the number of words your document contains on the status bar.

See screenshot:

Number of Words on the status bar

This Word Count is the number of words in the entire document. However, you can also select a portion of the document’s content and MS Word will show in the status bar, the number of words in the selection.

See screenshot:

Word Count in a selection

If for whatever reasons you can’t see the word count on the status bar, below is how you can display it.

How to show word count on Word‘s status bar

Word count not found on the status bar

You can show and hide the word count on the status bar of your Word document.

If you can’t see the number of words your document has on the status bar, it means that it is hidden. And to see it, you need to take some steps in order to show it.

Obey the instructions below to perform this task:

  • Right-click on the status bar of the document.
  • A dialog box appears, click on Word Count.
Click on Word count from the list of commands
  • As soon as you click on Word Count, the number of words in your document will now show on the status bar.
Word count on Word's status bar

Pro Tip: To see more statistics of your Word document, such as number of lines and paragraphs your document has, click on the Word Count command on the status bar.

Find Word count on the Review Tab

Aside from using the status bar to see how many words your document has, you can also use the review tab for the same task.

Under the review tab, in the proofing category, the Word Count command is available.

Obey the instructions below to check Word Count using the review tab:

  • Go to the Review tab.
  • In the Proofing category, click the Word Count command.
Go to Review>Proofing>Word Count

When you click on the Word Count command, the Word Count dialog box will appear containing the number of Words your document has. The dialog box also shows other statistics of your document including the number of pages, characters, paragraphs and also the number of lines in your document.

See screenshot:

Word Count statistics

NOTE: If you select the checkbox in the screenshot above, the total number of words in the document will include textboxes, footnotes and endnotes.

This are the various ways you can easily find the number of words in MS Word.

You can also copy and paste your text into this word counting tool if you are not using a word processor with the word count feature: https://wordcounter.net/