Display Character Count in Status Bar (Word 2010)

Anonymous
2010-12-25T18:30:36+00:00

I can right-click on the status bar and display the Word Count, but I need to see the Character Count as I type.

How can I display the Character Count in the status bar?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Paul Edstein 82,871 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2010-12-28T03:08:51+00:00

Without programming a new class event to intercept your typing, you can't get a dynamic character count to display on the status bar and, if you did, it would probably prevent anything else displaying there.

You could, though, use a macro like the following and assign a keyboard shortcut to it:

Sub CharCount()

Application.StatusBar = "Character Count = " & ActiveDocument.Characters.Count

End Sub

The above macro temporarily takes over the status bar to display the character count. It gets hidden again as soon as you resume whatever you were doing.

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Answer accepted by question author
Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2012-03-26T23:18:36+00:00

Technically, something is always selected. If the selection is collapsed to just the insertion point, then the selection is the single character to its right (which may be a paragraph mark). Therefore, the modified macro will show 'Character Count = 1' .

If that makes you unhappy, you can change the macro to this:

Sub CharCount()

If Selection.Type = wdSelectionIP Then

   Application.StatusBar = "Character Count = 0"

Else

   Application.StatusBar = "Character Count = " & Selection.Characters.Count

End If

End Sub

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-03-21T04:04:35+00:00

    What a great resolution, Paul ~ THANK YOU!!

    I came across this post while Googling for a way to count characters in Word . . . I'm normally not one to just follow someone's macro, but I did yours - and it worked beautifully!

    Thanks Again.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-01-08T11:31:22+00:00

    Thank you to Paul for answering the question and solving my problem. Thank you also Jay for pointing out where I was going wrong. Yes I was sure that it said character and not column (col) as that’s how I remembered it.

    I think this is a good lesson on the human memory which is not reliable as we recall what we “think” that we remember. Is a policeman surprised when 6 witnesses give 6 different versions of what happened? No they’re not

    One thing that I’ve learned from this post is don’t slag anyone based on facts that I remember.

    My apologies to Microsoft for my inaccurate comments

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-01-08T02:00:19+00:00

    Thank you Mr. Paul Edstein!! Excellent answer and very easy to do. Happy 2013!!

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