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Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company.
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Tips.Net > WordTips Home > Macros > VBA Examples > Counting Characters in a Selection with VBA

Counting Characters in a Selection with VBA

by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 9, 2015)

When you are developing macros, it is often helpful to know how many characters are in a text selection. The following VBA macro, CharCount, will display the number of characters in a selection.

Sub CharCount()
    Dim Title As String
    Dim CharCount As Integer
    Dim Message As String

    Title = "CharCount"
    CharCount = Len(Selection)
    Message = LTrim(Str(CharCount)) + " character"
    If CharCount <> 1 Then Message = Message + "s"
    MsgBox Message, vbOKOnly, Title
End Sub

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (746) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

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Comments for this tip:

B 16 Apr 2015, 10:08

For i = 1 To wordDocument.Paragraphs.Count
        ' Get the first 20 characters of the paragraph
        paragraphText = wordDocument.Paragraphs(i).Range.Text
        If Len(paragraphText) > 20 Then
            paragraphText = Left(paragraphText, 20)
        End If
        ' qne put it in the next cell down
        ActiveCell.Offset(i - 1, 0) = paragraphText
    Next i

milkan 13 Jan 2015, 03:11

how to create online counter? http://www.wordcounter.biz/

Richard Kennedy 03 Dec 2014, 14:22

Addendum

Len(Selection.Range) returns 0 when no characters are selected.

When characters are selected Len(Selection.Range) returns the same value as Len(Selection), Selection.Characters.Count and Selection.Range.Characters.Count

Richard Kennedy 03 Dec 2014, 14:13

You can also obtain character counts using the ComputeStatistics method of the Range object:

CharCount = Selection.Range.ComputeStatistics(wdStatisticCharactersWithSpaces)

(spaces are included in the count, but not carriage returns)

Selection.Range.ComputeStatistics(wdStatisticCharacters)

(spaces are not included in the count, punctuation marks are included)

Len(Selection), Selection.Characters.Count, and
Selection.Range.Characters.Count return Selection.Range.ComputeStatistics(wdStatisticCharactersWithSpaces)
plus carriage return characters.

If no characters are selected, then
Selection.Range.ComputeStatistics(wdStatisticCharactersWithSpaces) = 0 and
Selection.Range.ComputeStatistics(wdStatisticCharacters) = 0, but Len(Selection) = 1, Selection.Characters.Count = 1, and Selection.Range.Characters.Count = 1.

(tested with Word 2013)