Counting Characters in a Selection with VBA

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 26, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


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

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

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.

Author Bio

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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Changing Y-Axis Label Width

Excel provides quite a bit of flexibility in how your chart looks. One of the least flexible places is in adjusting the ...

Discover More

Creating Page Footers and Headers

Headers and footers can add a final, professional touch to your printed document. Here's the quick way to add the headers ...

Discover More

Turning Off Paragraph Hyphenation

Need to make sure that a particular paragraph never has any hyphenated words in it? You can make sure that Word won't ...

Discover More

Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word 2013 Step by Step today!

More WordTips (menu)

Calculated Dates

Word makes it easy to insert today's date in a document, but not as easy to insert a date X number of days in the future. ...

Discover More

Understanding the For ... Next Structure

Spend any time creating Word macros, and sooner or later you will need to repeat some of your programming code a certain ...

Discover More

Determining the Current Page Number

While your macro is processing the text in your document, you may need a way to determine the current page number where ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 6 + 3?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Videos
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.