Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Word and Character Count Information.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 17, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Word keeps track of quite a bit of summary information for your documents. One of the pieces of information maintained is the number of characters in your document, and another is the number of words. This information is updated whenever the document is saved or printed. Word allows you to insert this summary information into your document by following these steps:
Figure 1. The Field dialog box.
By combining these two fields, you can easily calculate the average word length. To do this, follow these steps:
{={NumChars}/{NumWords}}
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (387) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Word and Character Count Information.
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