Word count ?

Do you only want to do this for a few different words, or do you want to create a list?

There is freeware available to give you detailed information about word usage. If you just want to check on the occurrence of a single word you can use find/replace: enter the word you want to count in the Find box, and ^& in the Replace box, then click Replace All. It won't actually replace the words (or actually, it will replace it with the same word). It will then tell you how many words it "replaced".

If you want to be completely safe when you do this, Save the file before doing this, then run Find/Replace. If it looks like anything is screwed up, exit without saving.

Chris P said:

I've heard people mention this freeware. Do you have a link?

Click to expand...

I think someone on here wrote one version. I'd have to poke around, or search to find it. It might be listed in one of the stickies at the top of the forum.

Word 2007 has a find and highlight option in the Edit/find dialog box. I don't remember if it was in Word 2003. Using the highlight option will tell you how many instances of whatever you searched for, whether it was a word or a phrase. You can then un-highlight what you found to clean up the document.

Some helpful AWer has already posted such items. Here's the thread:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11653

There are also non-MS office tools, but I can't remember where I saw them. Soon as I find them, I'll post a link.