Specific Word Count In Microsoft Word

Task

We need to count how many times a specific word occurs in our document. In our case, we need to know how many times the words “tomato ketchup” occur in our document.

Fooling Microsoft Word

• We can’t use word count because this feature tells us te total number of words in our document, not the number of a particular set of words.
• We will have to be sneaky and use some other function that was not created for our purpose.
• To find the number of occurrences of a specific word in a Microsoft Word document, you can use the Find funtion.
• However, because this function is not automated we will have to use Find and Replace.
• When you use the Find and Replace function, when it completes it tells you how many replacements it performed.
• If we construct our Find and Replace correctly, the number of replacements will be the number of our specific words in the document.

Constructing The Find And Replace

• As we said earlier, we will use the Find and Replace function.
• We want to count how many times the words “tomato ketchup” appear in our document.
• Position the cursor at the beginning of the document.
• In the Home tab click on the Replace button. You can also use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + H.

• In theFind and Replace window that opens, type in “Tomato Ketchup” into both the Find Whatand the Replace with boxes.
• This is so that if you accidentally save your document afterwards, no changes will have been made.
• Click the Replace All button and wait for the Find and Replace to complete.
• After Word has finished, it displays the following window telling you how many occurrences of “Tomato Ketchup” it found:

The sneaky bit was getting Word to replace the words “tomato ketchup” with exactly the same words. The number of replacements is simply the number of occurrences. Obviously, replace these words with the ones you want to count!

Find And Replace Tips

• You can make the Find and Replace count case sensitive by clicking on the More button and ensuring that Match case is checked.

• In this case the find and replace will be limited to the precise case that you used in the Find what box.
• You can also use this procedure to count how many styles, bold, italic or otherwise formatted words are in the document.