Microsoft word is the application I have used for a very long time to write content for Windowslovers. I’ve tried other applications too but I find myself coming back to using Word over other word processing applications. I always keep track of how many words or characters I’ve written for a specific post. If you are trying to learn how to count character in Word, this is the guide for you.
Word automatically displays the total word count for the document on the status bar located on the bottom-left corner of Microsoft Word’s window. If you have a limitation on the number of characters you can time or have a word count constraint, it’s a smart idea to keep tabs on them.
How To Count Character In Word
There are a couple of different ways you can count characters in Microsoft Word.
- Count the total characters in the currently open word document
- Count characters within the selected text
Please use the one you find convenient or is useful in your case from the methods below:
- See the character count from the status bar
- Keyboard shortcut to see character count with or without space
- Enable the character counter on the status bar
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1. See the character count from the status bar
The status bar is the bar on the bottom of your Microsoft Word window. It’s enabled by default and if for whatever reason it is disabled, please skip to the section on how to enable word count on the status bar.
Click on the word counter next to the page number on the status bar.
A small pop-up window opens up which displays your current documents information.
- Pages
- Words
- Character (no spaces) – This is the one you are looking for
- Character (with spaces) – Its not very helpful as the spaces are also taken into account
- Paragraphs
- Lines
- Non-Asian words
- Asian characters, Korean words
1.1 Character (no spaces)
I only take this into consideration and accurate. The character count with spaces is also accurate but is not very helpful or useful in my case.
And like mentioned earlier, to count characters in word of your selection, select it with the mouse or the keyboard first.
Once done, press the “Esc” key to go back to editing mode.
2. Keyboard shortcut to view the count
Press “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “G” on your keyboard to bring up the word count quick access window.
For counting characters of a selection, first, select the part of the document followed by “Ctrl” + “Alt” + “g”.
To go back to the editor, either click anywhere on the screen or press the “Esc” key on your keyboard.
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3. Enable the word count in the status toolbar
As you can see in the screenshot below, there is no word count or character count.
To enable both, right-click on the toolbar and enable “Word Count” and “Character Count(with spaces)”.
Unfortunately, there is an option for counting characters without spaces here. So I am not sure enabling the count with spaces will be of much help.
But enabling the word count does make it easier to see your progress at a glance.
You don’t have a keyboard?
You can see the character count from the menu toolbar on the top of the screen.
Click on “Review” and you will find a “Word Count” button in the Proofing section.
Open it to view the character count of your word document.
