MS Word: Words count - how it works

As soon as you write something in a Word document, the program starts counting the words.

Count words in a Word document

As soon as you start typing in your Word document, the word count starts. The number of pages and the number of words are displayed in the status bar at the bottom left of the document.

• You can also click the word count button. A statistic opens, which also gives you information about the number of characters, paragraphs and lines.
• If you tick the box "Include text fields, footnotes and endnotes" under the statistics, Word also counts content in text fields, footnotes and endnotes.

Count words in a selection

Highlight a specific section. At the bottom left you will now see the number of words in the selection separated from the total number of words in the document.

Read another practical tip on how to interrupt line numbering in Word.