How to count the number of characters in Word, Open Office and Excel

Everyone whose work is related to translations or writing, from time to time it is necessary to calculate the number of characters in the text with or without spaces. How to do it?

In Word

In Microsoft Word, characters are counted using the "Statistics" function in the "Tools" menu. You can find the function in the specified path in any version of the program. Word statistics will show the number of words, characters with spaces and without spaces, double-byte and single-byte characters (you do not need to work with texts), as well as lines, pages and paragraphs.

If you activate the function after the text fragment is selected, information about its length will appear in a special window. Otherwise, you will receive information about the entire document.

In versions of Word below 2007, when using the function frequently, it is advisable to transfer it to the toolbar. To do this, you can drag the appeared window with statistics to it, or right-click on the panel and mark the "Statistics" item in the list.

In Word 2007 and 2010, the number of words in the document can be seen at the bottom left. If you double-click on this place, a window with other statistics items will appear.

You can also count the number of characters in a document without spaces by using fields. Place the cursor where you want to see the field.

For Word earlier versions:

• On the Insert menu, click Field. A dialog box appears.
• In the left part of the window you will be asked to choose the field category and its meaning. In the category, select "About Document", and in the values - NumChars.
• Click OK, and a number appears at the specified location, indicating the number of characters.

For Word 2007 and 2010:

• In the "Text" menu, select the "Insert" tool> "Quick paste" and then the "Field" item.
• Select the "About document" category and the value of the NumChars field.
• Click OK.

The content of the field (the number of characters) must be updated after each saving of the document. If the field is not updated automatically, right-click on it to open the context menu and select "Update field" in it.

In Open Office

To calculate the number of characters in an Open Office document, proceed in the same way as in Word. Statistics can be found in the "Tools"> "Number of Words" menu. True, it is not as detailed as in Word. A pop-up window will show only the number of words in the document (or the selected passage) and the number of characters with spaces.

If you want to find the number of characters without spaces, you need to go to the document search and enter the expression [: space:] * - it means a space. By clicking "Find All", you will see the number of spaces in the text that you need to subtract from the number obtained for characters with spaces.

In Excel

Using the function LEN () or DLL (), you can count the number of characters in the cell. The resulting value will take into account not only the spaces, but also the hyphenation signs, if a paragraph was placed in the cell with a paragraph break.

Despite these shortcomings, the function is convenient, for example, when working with a large amount of text, when counting characters is only one of a number of tasks. With the help of a number of other formulas in Excel, you can conduct detailed statistics of texts, count characters without spaces and exclude some others (Latin, punctuation, numbers).

However, if you need to count the number of characters without HTML tags or with any other options, it is better to refer to special programs or online services.