How to Check Word Count in a PDF, Google Docs, Word & PowerPoint

To word count a PDF, select all its text (Ctrl+A, or Cmd+A on Mac), copy it, and paste it into a word counter. PDF readers like Adobe Acrobat Reader do not have a word count button, so copying the text out is the quickest free method. In Google Docs, MS Word and Pages the count is built in; you just need to know where the menu is.

Below are the exact steps for each app, plus the reasons two tools can disagree by a few words.

How to word count a PDF

1. Open the PDF in any viewer: your browser, Acrobat Reader, Preview on Mac, or a phone PDF app.
2. Press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Cmd+A (Mac) to select all the text. On a phone, long-press a word and drag the handles, or use "Select all" if the app offers it.
3. Copy it (Ctrl+C / Cmd+C).
4. Paste into our word counter. You get words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time instantly. The text stays in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

A few things to watch for:

• Headers, footers and page numbers are copied along with the body text. If your limit is for the main text only, delete them before counting, or subtract them.
• Text copied from a PDF breaks at the end of every line. This does not change the word count, but if you want to paste the text somewhere else, run it through remove line breaks first. Our guide on removing line breaks from PDF text explains the options.
• Scanned PDFs have no text to copy. If Ctrl+A highlights nothing, the PDF is just pictures of pages. Our tools do not do OCR (text recognition). A free route is to upload the PDF to Google Drive, right-click it and choose Open with > Google Docs; Drive converts it into an editable document using OCR, and you can then use Docs' own word count.

Word count in a PDF using MS Word

Desktop Word can open a PDF directly (File > Open, choose the PDF). It converts the PDF into an editable document, and the word count appears in the status bar. Complex layouts can come out messy, but the count is usually close enough for checking a limit.

Word count in Google Docs

• Go to Tools > Word count, or press Ctrl+Shift+C (Cmd+Shift+C on Mac).
• The box shows pages, words, characters and characters excluding spaces.
• Tick Display word count while typing to keep a small live counter in the bottom-left corner.
• To count part of a document, select that text first; the box then shows "X of Y words".

In the Google Docs app on Android or iPhone, tap the three-dot menu and choose Word count.

Word count in MS Word

• The live count sits in the status bar at the bottom of the window. If it is missing, right-click the status bar and tick Word Count.
• For details, go to Review > Word Count (or press Ctrl+Shift+G on Windows). This shows pages, words, characters with and without spaces, paragraphs and lines.
• The box has a checkbox for Include textboxes, footnotes and endnotes. Tick or untick it depending on what your limit covers.
• Select a passage first to count just that part.

Word count on Pages (Mac and iPad)

• On a Mac, choose View > Show Word Count. A counter appears at the bottom of the page; click its arrows to switch between words, characters, paragraphs and pages.
• On an iPad or iPhone, turn on Word Count from the View options in the toolbar. The counter appears at the bottom of the screen.

Word count on PowerPoint

PowerPoint does not show words in the status bar, but the information is there:

• Windows: File > Info, then Show All Properties on the right. Look for Words.
• Mac: File > Properties, then the Statistics tab.

These figures can be confusing because they may not match exactly what is on the slides you care about. For a precise count of particular slides, copy the text out of each text box and paste it into a word counter.

Word count in Excel and Google Sheets

There is no word count feature in spreadsheets, but a formula counts the words in a cell by counting the spaces between them:

=IF(LEN(TRIM(A1))=0,0,LEN(TRIM(A1))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ",""))+1)

TRIM removes extra spaces so double spaces are not counted as extra words. Copy the formula down a column and use SUM to total it. The same formula works in Google Sheets. For characters, =LEN(A1) counts every character including spaces.

Word count on a phone, Canva or a web page

• Any app without a counter (Notes on iPhone, Canva, email drafts, a web page): select the text, copy it, and paste it into a word counter in your phone's browser.
• A web page: select the article text with your mouse, or use your browser's reader mode, then copy and paste. Pressing Ctrl+A on a whole page also picks up menus and footers, which inflates the count.

Why different tools give different word counts

If Word says 1,012 and an online counter says 1,006, neither is broken. Counters disagree on edge cases:

Our counter treats a word as a run of letters, numbers, apostrophes and hyphens, so don't and well-known count as one word each, and stray symbols are not counted at all. It works with Hindi and other languages that put spaces between words.

Rule of thumb: if a university, scholarship or job portal gives a limit, use the counter they are likely to use (often Word, or the portal's own box) and leave yourself a margin of 5–10 words below the maximum.

Characters, reading time and limits

Some limits are in characters, not words: SOP boxes on application portals, tweets, meta descriptions and SMS. Use the character counter for these; it shows characters with and without spaces. Our guide to character count limits lists the common ones.

For speeches and presentations, the word counter also shows speaking time at about 140 words per minute, and reading time at 238 words per minute. If you are wondering how much text fits a given limit, see how long a 500-word essay is.

Common mistakes

• Counting the whole PDF including headers, references and page numbers when the limit covers only the main text.
• Trusting a scanned PDF's count of zero. If nothing is selected, the text is an image and needs OCR first.
• Forgetting footnotes. Word's Word Count box can include or exclude them; check what your instructions say.
• Going right up to the limit. Portals sometimes count differently and cut you off. Keep a small buffer.
• Counting a selection by accident. If Word or Docs shows "X of Y words", part of the text is selected. Click once in the text to deselect and see the full count.

Questions