If you’re like most people, you probably count lines, words, and characters in a word document the same way: by looking at the bottom of the document. But there’s a better way to do it. The first thing you need to do is open your word document in whatever view you want to count lines, words, and characters in. For example, if you’re looking at the document on your computer screen, you would open it in Normal view. Next, click on the View tab and then click on Show/Hide Columns. This will show you all of the columns in your document. Now click on the Number button (the one with a number 1 next to it) and then choose Count Lines. This will start counting lines from the top of your document down to the bottom. As each line is counted, a green checkmark will appear next to it. When counting words, simply repeat this process: Click on the Number button (the one with a number 2 next to it), choose Count Words, and then click on OK. This will count all of the words in your document from left to right and top to bottom. As each word is counted, a blue checkmark will appear next to it. Finally, when counting characters, simply repeat this process: Click on the Number button (the one with a number 3 next to it), choose Count Characters, and then click on OK. This will count all of the characters in your document from left to right and top to bottom. As each character is counted, a yellow checkmark will appear next to it ..
Word includes a tool that allows you to view simple statistics about your document. These statistics include how many pages, words, characters, paragraphs, and lines are in your document. This is useful if you have to follow certain guidelines when writing your document.
To view these statistics, open the document in question and click the “Review” tab.
In the “Proofing” section, click “Word Count”.
The “Word Count” dialog box displays, as shown in the image at the beginning of this document. The number of pages and words can also be viewed on the status bar at the bottom of the Word window.
NOTE: The number of pages is only visible on the status bar when you are viewing your document in “Print Layout” view or “Draft” view (using the “View” tab).
If you don’t see the number of pages and words on the status bar, right-click on the status bar and select the items you want to view from the popup menu. Note that you can also view the line number for the line where the cursor is currently located.
The number of lines and pages may vary, depending on several factors, such as the margins in your document, the font and font size, and paragraph spacing, to name a few. For example, if you change to a smaller font size, there will be fewer lines and pages in your document than there would be with a larger font size. Even different printer drivers can result in a slightly different rendering of a font, thereby changing the number of lines and pages in your document.
Hidden text can also affect the line count reported on the “Word Count” dialog box. If the option to print hidden text is turned of, Word doesn’t count hidden text in the line count. If you want hidden text included in the line count, make sure you configure Word to print hidden text.
