Counting a Particular Word

There are times that I need to know how often I've used a particular word in a document, or even in a part of a document. The Word Count tool doesn't allow you to limit a count to a specific word, but there is a neat little workaround you can do.

1. If you want to count only in a particular area of your document, select the text you want included in the count. (You can select multiple, non-contiguous areas of text by holding down the Ctrl key as you make your selections with the mouse.)
2. Press Ctrl+H, or choose Replace from the Edit menu. Word displays the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. In the Find What box, enter the word you want to count.
4. In the Replace With box, enter the same word.
5. Click Replace All.

Word replaces all occurrences of the word with itself, so there really are no changes done to your document. However, a dialog box appears that indicates how many changes were performed; this is your word count.

If you are skittish about doing find and replace operations, make sure you save your document before using this workaround.