It seems like every time Microsoft releases a new version of Office, they move everything around! You get used to seeing one thing in one menu, and in the next version of Office, this setting moves to another menu! Grrrr. I have upgraded to Office 2010 and one of the most common features I use is character / word counting.
Of course, I couldn’t find it right away and I had to flip through all the feeds before I finally saw it! By default, in Word 2010, it is located on the Review tab under the Spelling section.
By clicking on it, you will get not only the number of words, but also other statistics such as pages, characters with and without spaces, paragraphs and lines.
I still find it rather annoying as I use it so often, so I need a faster way to access the same information. Fortunately, Word 2010 has the ability to add word counts to the status bar at the bottom. Just right click on the status bar and you will see the Word Count option.
– /
By selecting it, you will see the word count in the lower left corner of the status bar:
That’s all! Optionally, you can also add a word count to the Quick Access Toolbar by right-clicking the icon in the Overview tab and choosing Add to Quick Access Toolbar.
Now it will also show up at the very top, but it doesn’t really differ from what is in the status bar, that’s just personal preference. You have both options.
As an added bonus, I’ll just add a few more features that I’ve used a lot but took a minute to find in Office 2010. For example, where is the Find and Replace feature in Word 2010? On the main tab in the farthest right corner, click Replace.
Where is the spell checker in Word 2010? Again, this is in the Review tab under the Spelling section.
And finally, where is the developer tab for those of us who need it? To do this, you need to click “File”, “Options” and then – “Customize the Ribbon.” Under Main Tabs, check the box next to Developer
.
This will allow you to open Visual Basic and record macros, etc. If you are looking for something else in Word 2010, let us know in the comments and we’ll get back to you! Enjoy!
–