How to count the number of words in a document in Google Docs
Word processing apps like Microsoft Word have long provided a way to count the number of words or characters for a document, so it makes sense to get this information for a Google document as well. Fortunately, you can find out the word count in Google Docs using an option in the menu or a keyboard shortcut.
Certain document situations will require you to use a minimum amount of words. But when the number of words starts to grow, manually counting all the words in a document can take unnecessarily long and lead to errors. Fortunately, many word processing tools have word counting tools, including Google Docs.
Our guide below will show you where to find the Google Docs word count tool to find this information. You will also be able to get the number of pages and the number of characters if this information is also necessary for your task.
How to find word counts in Google Docs
Click the Tools tab.
Select the Word Count option.
Find the word count to the right of the words.
Our article continues below with more information on word counting in Google Docs, including images of these steps.
How to Count the Word Count in a Google Doc Document (Image Guide)
The steps in this guide will help you quickly count the number of words in your entire document.
Step 1. Open your Google Drive by going to https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive and double-click the document you want to count words for.
Step 2: Click the "Tools" tab at the top of the window.
Step 3: Select the Word Count option.
You should now see a window similar to the previous one, which provides you with several pieces of information about your document related to counting. This window displays the number of pages, the number of words, the number of characters, and the number of characters without spaces.
Note that you can also force Google Docs to count word counts by using the keyboard shortcut for counting words in Google Docs Ctrl + Shift + C on your keyboard. On Mac, the keyboard shortcut is Command + Shift + C.
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, Google Docs has no way of getting the current word count while editing a document. You will need to use the above method whenever you want to see the word count in your document.
Google Docs now provides a way to count words when typing in Google Docs. Now, when you open the Word Count window, there is an option at the bottom of the "Display the number of words when typing." When you enable this, a small popup will appear in the lower left corner of the screen showing the total word count for the document. This word count checker is really handy and can help speed up your workflow.
If you have Microsoft Word, this article will show you where to find the current word count.
More information on how to check word count in Google Docs
When you check the word count in Google Docs, you see several pieces of information, including page count, total word count, character count, and non-whitespace character count.
Words you add to a document header or footer are not included when checking word count in Google Docs.
Does your school or workplace require page numbers on your documents? Learn how to add page numbers to Google Docs to make it easier to find your place if your document is out of order.
