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: Displaying Quick Document Statistics.

Displaying Quick Document Statistics

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 26, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Word tracks all sorts of information about your documents. If you know where to look, you can quickly display much of that information. For instance, if you want to quickly determine the number characters, words, lines, paragraphs, and pages in your document, you can simply choose Word Count from the Tools menu. Word displays the Word Count dialog box (See Figure 1.) and quickly calculates the statistics about the document. (If you are working on a huge or complex document, the calculations may take a short amount of time.)

Figure 1. The Word Count dialog box.

Notice at the bottom of the dialog box is a check box that indicates whether Word should include information in the footnotes and endnotes in its calculations. You should select this option, as desired. When you are done viewing the statistics, click on the OK or Close button. (The button name varies, depending on your version of Word.)

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3463) 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: Displaying Quick Document Statistics.

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. ...

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