Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 18, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365
As a teacher, Wendy critiques her students on how often they repeat words in their writing. When she opens a document from her students, she wonders if Word can tell her the words they have repeated. She understands that she can use Find and Replace if she knows the word she is looking for; however, this means that she would have to identify a repeated word. She is looking for Word to do the work for her. Naturally, Wendy wouldn't want Word to let her know that the student has used common words like A, AN, THE, AND, etc.
When you want a count of the number of times each word in a document is used, what you are looking for is typically referred to (in Word circles) as a "word frequency count" or a "concordance with counts." Searching on the web for these terms can uncover a wide variety of tools you could use for this purpose.
Some WordTips subscribers made suggestions of tools that work well for them. One such tool is WordCounter, from our friends over at the Editorium (www.editorium.com). This Word add-in can be used free for 45 days. After that, you can register it for only $19.95.
A standalone program—one not run as a Word add-in—is TextSTAT. It can read several types of files, including Word documents. It produces a detailed listing with all sorts of statistical summaries. Best of all, TextSTAT is free at:
http://neon.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/en/textstat/
If you'd like to "jump under the hood" and create your own macro to get the desired results, consider the discussion at a previous WordTip, located here:
https://wordribbon.tips.net/T010761
You could also benefit by examining how MVP Greg Maxey tackles the issue:
https://gregmaxey.com/word_tip_pages/word_usage_and_frequency_report.html
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11362) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.
The First and Last Word on Word! Bestselling For Dummies author Dan Gookin puts his usual fun and friendly candor back to work to show you how to navigate Word 2013. Spend more time working and less time trying to figure it all out! Check out Word 2013 For Dummies today!
Adding quote marks is normally as simple as typing them from the keyboard. However, if you want to add quote marks around ...
Discover MoreWhen you use the Find and Replace dialog box to do editing, you could easily lose track of where you were before ...
Discover MoreWant to add a finishing touch to your printed document? Hyphenating the words in the document can make your text read ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
Visit the WordTips channel on YouTube
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2024 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Comments