When writing a Word document, you may find it necessary to measure how many times you have used a certain word within your work. This is completely understandable, as using the same word too often will give your writing a repetitive, monotonous feel that would no doubt bore the reader.
Not only would it disinterest any potential audiences, but it may be something that you, the writer, doesn’t even pick up on. It’s quite normal to skim read your own work, but doing so may mean that you use a word excessively throughout your piece, without you even realising.
Thankfully, there is a fairly simple solution by which you can count the number of times a particular word appears in your Word document, and it is something that can be started and completed in under five minutes.
To count how many times you have used a certain word in your Word document, you can manually search for a word in order to highlight its usage throughout your work.
Below is a step-by-step breakdown on how to do this, but don’t worry if this isn’t enough. Following the step-by-step will be a further, in depth walkthrough on how to complete the process, complete with annotated screenshots to serve as further aid.
Step by step: How to count a number of times a certain word appears in your Word document
– Open your document in Word
– Click the ‘Home’ tab of your document
– Within the ‘Editing’ subsection of your taskbar, find and click the ‘Find’ option.
– Enter the word you wish to find, and they will be highlighted within the text.
As aforementioned, don’t worry if this isn’t enough for you to go on. Below is an in-depth breakdown.
So first, you will want to open the document you wish to use this on. When you have done that, look towards the navigation bar at the top of your screen. From here, make sure you are on the Home section, which you should be on as a default.
From here, find the editing subsection, located towards the right of the navigation bar. Within the editing section, click Find. In case you need further assistance, below is a screenshot showing you where to look. The wider red box is the editing section, whilst the smaller, blue box shows you where the Find option is.
Once you have done this, a menu will present itself on the left of your screen. On it, there will be a bar in which you can enter the word you wish to be searched. The bar is presented below:
In this bar, enter whichever word you wish to be highlighted throughout your text. After you have done so, press enter to search, or click to magnifying glass just inside the box.
Once you have done this, the navigation will search through your document and highlight your desired word in yellow. From there, you will be able to count how many times you have used the word.
Conversely, if the document is a much longer piece, then you can simply search for the word you wish to highlight. In the screenshot below, you will see how the navigation system works.
If this process seems somewhat lengthy, then that’s a completely valid thought. If you wish to do this in a shorter way, then simply press Ctrl + F to quickly open up the find tab, and then search for the word you wish to find.
In truth, this is the only real way to resolve this query. Thankfully, the process is a fairly simple one to follow, especially in comparison to the walkthrough’s of some topics!
For similar issues, I’d recommend looking at some of these blogs to see if they are of any assistance. They are listed due to some similarity with this topic, such as focus on a particular word/passage of text (for example):
Automatically forward emails according to the subject line in Outlook – Business Tech Planet
How to automatically CC or BCC yourself in Outlook 365 – Business Tech Planet
How to prevent saving of Outlook password – Business Tech Planet
Thank you for reading this blog, I hope you found it as helpful as you hoped it would be! As always, if you stumble upon any issues following this guide, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with a member of our team.