Page Counts for Many Documents

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 2, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365

Fred has a folder that contains, perhaps, 200 Word documents. Many of these documents have a hundred or more pages. He is looking for a simple way to display a list of all the documents in the folder along with the page count of each of the documents.

Fortunately, this can be easily done in Windows. All you need to do is follow these steps:

Get out of Word completely. (This is done in Windows, not in Word.)
Use Windows Explorer (Windows 7) or File Explorer (Windows 8 and Windows 10) to display the folder that contains the Word documents.
If you are using Windows 7, use the View drop-down list (near the upper-right corner of the window) to choose Details. If you are using Windows 8 or Windows 10, display the View tab of the ribbon and click Details in the Layout group. You should now see the document files listed in a table, using columns such as Name, Type, Size, etc.
Right-click in the heading area. Windows displays a Context menu that shows various columns that can be displayed.
Choose the More option. Windows displays the Choose Details dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Choose Details dialog box.

Scroll through the list of available details and make sure the Pages check box is selected.
Click OK. The dialog box closes, and a Pages column now appears for the files in the folder.

Realize that these steps will change the view details for only the current folder—the one you are looking at right now. If you want to change the view for all your folders, then you should perform the following steps immediately after having done the previous set of steps:

Display the Folder Options dialog box. (In Windows 7 click the Organize drop-down near the upper-left of the window and then choose Folder and Search Options. In Windows 8 and Windows 10 display the View tab of the ribbon and then click the Options tool at the right side of the ribbon.)
Make sure the View tab is displayed. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The View tab of the Folder Options dialog box.

Click Apply to Folders. Windows asks you if you want to modify the display of all your folders.
Click Yes.
Click OK to close the Folder Options dialog box.

After you modify the view to include page counts (or any other items you want included), you may need to close the Explorer window and reopen it to make sure you can see all the information you requested.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9959) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Modifying the Backup Copy File Name

Backup files, created automatically by Word, have the filename extension WBK and start with the words "Backup of." If you ...

Discover More

Understanding Ascending and Descending Sorts

When you sort information, Excel follows a set pattern of how your data is organized. This tip illuminates the burning ...

Discover More

Setting Program Window Size in a Macro

The macro programming language used in Excel gives you a great many tools that allow you to modify the way that Excel ...

Discover More

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!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Recovering Password-Protected Documents

Got a locked document you just need to get into? It may be quite easy (or next to impossible) using the ideas in this tip.

Discover More

Documents Lock on Their Own

Do you have documents that seem to be locked when you didn't lock them? There are several possible reasons for this ...

Discover More

Saving All Open Documents

Got a lot of open documents you are working with? You can save them all at one time by adding a handy tool to your Quick ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is 2 + 2?

2020-08-19 06:49:40

Gary

Great tip.. I've searched the internet. Can I find out how to do this on a mac nope!!

2019-04-03 19:36:06

Josie

Can someone tell me why it doesn't work for all my files? I've got .doc and .docx and it works for some of both of them, but not ALL of both of them. Many files just have a blank for Pages.

I thought maybe if I opened them to refresh or something, but no. It is irritating.

2019-03-15 04:35:10

Chris

Hi bro, for the 'pages' option in choose details. It is only available for Microsoft word file? Is it possible if we can have the number of pages for PDF and TIFF files to be reflected as well?

2016-06-24 10:39:34

Beverly Ramos

How do you get a "page total". I can get a total for individual documents but I need a TOTAL PAGE COUNT for the entire folder.

2015-05-12 05:45:36

Richard

samrim
You need to open an Explorer window and select the Details view. This is a columnar representation of files in a folder with such information as Name, Date Modified, Type, Size, etc. The part of the screen where these titles are shown is where you should right-click. Left click will sort the respective column, and right click will allow you to choose columns.

2015-05-05 04:57:07

samrim

Where is heading column to right click. Not able to do it..pls help

2015-04-26 07:17:56

Sarah Patey

Genius! I've added Word count and rearranged the order of the columns, so now when I have a set of files to edit I can see from a glance at the folder the extent of the job. THANK YOU!

2015-04-26 03:33:50

Yehuda Zimmerman

Is there any way to get a quick total?

2015-04-25 23:02:57

Harry Davis

Some of the results are very inaccurate. A 28 page page document was listed as 4 pages. Some results are accurate.

2015-04-25 18:57:24

Michael (Micky) Avidan

The # of pages aren't, always, accurate.
The bigger the document the higher the error.
I found errors 2-3% in the results in about 15 large documents I have checked,
(*** all star on Pg. 1)
But it gives an estimate of the # of pages in each document.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

אם תגובתי פתרה את בעיתך - לחץ/י נא בצד שמאל, למטה, על הכיתוב הלחיץ: 'סמן כתשובה'
מיכאל (מיקי) אבידן
מחבר מאמרי ויקי, מנחה דיון בפורומים מרובים ב- TechNet ו-Answers של 'מיקרוסופט' ומנהל פורום 'אופיס' ב'תפוז'.
2009-2015 (Microsoft® Most Valuable Professional (MVP

2015-04-25 10:45:12

Andre

Good to know, thank you for this tip! Quite helpful.

2015-04-25 09:05:35

martijn

Seems I found the solution, worth to post for others: I right clicked my draft folder - properties - customize - check box 'also apply this template to all subfolders'
that did it!

2015-04-25 09:00:01

martijn

Hello, great tip, I use details in folder a lot for mp3 files, but never realized the page count is also there for MS Word.
I have a big folder called 'draft' for my book, which is full of subfolders with all word docs. It is stored on desktop.
I tried to use your tips, also the second one to apply to subfolders, but I only see the page count in the main folder, but no page count in subfolders. The 'draft' folder is on desktop, is that the problem?
Regards
Martijn van Heeringen

2015-04-25 04:56:17

Fred Niven

Hi,

Many thanks. I've just tried it & it worked perfectly. You've saved me so much time & effort.
All-the-best.
Fred Niven

This Site

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.