A document word count can come in handy in multiple situations. Maybe you’re writing a paper for schoolConquer Your Next Research Project The Easy Way With These ToolsConquer Your Next Research Project The Easy Way With These ToolsWhether you’re in school or you have a job, you likely have or will have to research at one point or another. And if you’re like most people, you will have to do it several...Read More and are striving to hit a certain amount of words, or perhaps you’re writing a book and want to know how much progress you’ve made in a day.

Whatever the reason, let’s take a look at several different ways to get a count of words, no matter which program you’re using.

Word’s Built-in Count

Microsoft Word is commonly used for documents and papers, so it makes sense that word counting is one of its essential routines to know10 Essential Microsoft Word Routines You Have to Know10 Essential Microsoft Word Routines You Have to KnowThe word 'routine' is the very image of boring. Except when it comes to a productivity app like Microsoft Word. Every second saved adds to the comfort of using it for our daily needs.Read More. You can get updated on your current word count in just a moment.

Word Count in the Status Bar

• As a word processing tool, Word 2016—which, at present, is only available as part of an Office 365 subscription—hasn’t changed much since its last major release as Word for Mac 2011.
• TextEdit is a nice, lightweight text editor, but in at least one sense it’s too lightweight: It doesn’t have a word-count feature.MacOSXHints.com reader mprussel figured out a solution: An.
• Word Counter Pro is a simple and powerful application for writers. With Word Counter Pro you can view statistics of your writing such as Word count, Character count, Sentence count, Line count, Paragraph count, and more.
• This is probably the best method of gaining a word counter into Mac apps that don’t support the feature natively. Using the Word & Character Counting Service in any OS X App. Now that the service has been created, you can use it just about anywhere in OS X that text or words are selectable.

There is a Microsoft Word for Mac (see link below). TextEdit (in the Applications folder) will open most Word documents. There are free alternatives to work with Word docs such as NeoOffice. Word Counter is an application that performs a word count and a character count, but it can do much more. It can be used independently or in conjunction with other applications such as TextEdit, Microsoft Word, Pages, TextWrangler, and others.

The most basic word count is at the bottom of your screen on the status bar. You should see an X Words entry on the bar; if you don’t, just right-click anywhere on it and make sure Word Count is checked.

Word Count Applet

If you’d like more details about just how many words are in your document, click the X Words text on the status bar or use Review > Word Count on the Ribbon. Either way, you’ll see this window:

As you can see, if you’re writing a paper and don’t want footnotes included in the count, you can ignore those with a checkbox.

This method counts all the words in your current document, but you can also select which paragraphs you’d like to measure. Highlight some text and not only will the status bar at the bottom update to X of Y Words to reflect how many you’ve selected, the full word count box described above will show information only about your selection.

Count Words in Selected Paragraphs

Finally, if you need to select groups of text that aren’t next to each other, use a handy mouse trick3 Handy Mouse Tricks You've Probably Never Heard Of [Windows]3 Handy Mouse Tricks You've Probably Never Heard Of [Windows]The computer mouse is an incredibly nifty device, which unfortunately, a lot of people do not use to its full potential. There are many more things the mouse can do than left-click to move and...Read More: simply highlight the first bit of text, then hold CTRL while highlighting the next chunk with your mouse.

The only difference for Office Online usersDon't Pay For Word! 5 Reasons You Should Use Office OnlineDon't Pay For Word! 5 Reasons You Should Use Office OnlineOffice Online is the free and cloud-connected version of Microsoft Office. Limitations are compensated by features, useful even to users of desktop Office. Best of all is itsRead More is that the word count on the status bar is only an approximation and does not include footnotes or text boxes. To see the full menu with a detailed count, click Open in Word header on the Ribbon to open your document in Word desktop. If you’re saving money by using Word Online6 Ways You Can Get a Microsoft Office License for Free6 Ways You Can Get a Microsoft Office License for FreeFree Microsoft Office licenses are hard to get, but they do exist. This article covers six ways to get Word and Excel for free.Read More and don’t have the full version, read on for other methods to use.

PDF Word Count

PDF is the most common format for documents aside from Word (or one of its alternatives). You’re probably not going to care about the word count in a PowerPoint or Excel file, but the amount of words in a PDF could very well be important. Let’s see a couple different ways to handle them.

Copy & Paste to Word

First, if your PDF is short, you can open it in your favorite PDF reader, press CTRL + A to select the entire document, then CTRL + C to copy the text. Open Word and paste it using CTRL + V — now you can use the above methods to get a word count.

Convert from PDF to Word

If your PDF is hundreds of pages, copying and pasting the whole thing could take a while. Try converting it to a Word documentThree Free Tools That Convert PDF Files To Word DocumentsThree Free Tools That Convert PDF Files To Word DocumentsThe PDF and DOC file formats are the bread-and-butter of modern documents. Chances are good that any specific document, be it an eBook, a study guide or a user manual, will be available in one...Read More using a tool like Nitro PDF to Word and see how it looks; depending on the content of the document it could work fine or look mangled. It’s worth a try.

Online PDF Word Count Tool

A third option is to use an online word count tool built for PDFs, such as Monterey Free PDF Word Count. Your mileage may vary, but in a sample 9-page PDF I used to try it, this site counted 5,035 words, the converted Word document counted 5,186, and copy-pasting counted 5,089 words. Thus, it won’t be exact, but you have an idea.

Finally, you can try some of the following tools to paste the PDF contents into, in case you need another opinion.

Online Tools

If you’re not using Word or a PDF and just want to see how many words are in an article online or some other place, online counters can help.

As we’ve seen, the simpler the document, the more accurate the word count will be. If you have a text file, you can paste it into Word or an online counter and get an accurate count. But a webpage or other content containing images, secondary text such as ads, or videos, could throw the numbers off — just a word of caution.

WordCounter (1)

The simply-named WordCounter will take any PDF, Word, or text file up to 15 MB and break it down into standard words, foreign words, numeric words, and non-standard words (such as email addresses). It’s great if you’re working with a lot of non-standard text or a lot of numbers; having 1,000 words but 200 of them being numbers is quite significant.

Word Counter App For Mac

Word Counter (2)

This second tool called Word Counter allows you to type or paste text into a box and offers a few additional features, such as how long the document will take the average person to read5 Text Reader Apps That Really Help You Speed Read5 Text Reader Apps That Really Help You Speed ReadRead More, the level of complexity, and the ten most common words in your document. It’s a nice complement to the basic word count.

You can find plenty of other word countersCount Words & Analyze A Document's Readability With Word Counter [Mac]Count Words & Analyze A Document's Readability With Word Counter [Mac]Read More online, but most offer a standard set of features. Some combination of the above tools will hopefully service your word counting needs.

Tally Them Up

Who knew counting words could be so involved? Now you’ll always know how to check your progress towards a certain amount of words, no matter which document format you’re working with. Just remember these tools are approximate and can’t guarantee 100% accuracy. On the other hand, whoever is controlling your word count will probably use those same tools.

Read through our list of browser-based tools for writers13 Browser-Based Tools For Writers13 Browser-Based Tools For WritersWhether you need help with organization or a clean slate on which to write your words, these tools will prove useful to all of you who write on a regular basis. Don't miss out!Read More to help with your writing even more.

What do you use word counts for? Do you prefer another method not listed here? Leave a comment below and let us know!

Mac Tools For Sale

Explore more about: Microsoft Word, PDF.

Network Tools For Mac

1. AnyCount is also handy tool with 38 formats supported. Though its limited to 10 word counts a day.