Windows from the Keyboard Tips, Microsoft Word – Determining Word or Character Counts, October 21, 2020

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions. The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.
Microsoft Word – Determining Word or Character Counts
While in a Word document, you can find out how many words or characters are in the entire document or a selected block of text. Select the block of text of interest or don’t select anything if you are interested in the counts for the entire document. Press F6 to jump to the Status tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Arrow right to the Word count button. Press spacebar on the word count button to find the number of characters, lines, and paragraphs. Press Escape to go back from the status tool bar to the body of your document.
Note: For users of the JAWS screen reader, you can press the JAWS+NumPad3 key to read the document status line which announces the number of pages and words.
That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.