Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 3, 2019)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021
If you want to quickly count the number of paragraphs in a document, here is a great way to do it:
Figure 1. The Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
Word replaces all the paragraph marks in the document with identical paragraph marks and displays a dialog box indicating how many replacements were made. The number of replacements is the number of paragraphs.
You may not be that impressed with this method, since you can also find out the number of paragraphs in a document by displaying the Statistics tab of the Properties dialog box. However, the real power comes in when you want to find out how many paragraphs you have of a certain style. All you need to do is expand your search a bit.
For instance, let's say you have a certain paragraph style that you use only for figures. To find out how many figures are in your document, follow these steps:
Figure 2. The Find Style dialog box.
That's it! The resulting dialog box indicates the number of replacements made, which are only for those paragraphs that use the figure style—in other words, you now know the number of figures in your document.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11790) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Quick and Dirty Paragraph Count.
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2019-08-03 19:17:34
Ken Endacott
In Word blank lines as counted as paragraphs. If you want a count of paragraphs excluding blank lines then in the Find What box, enter:
^13([!^13])
and in the Replace With box, enter:
^p\1
Make sure that Use Wildcards is ticked (click the More >> button to see this option).
If the first paragraph is not preceded by a blank line then add one to the count.
The logic of the find command is that it searches for a paragraph mark plus one character, but not if the second character is a paragraph mark. The found characters are then replaced with a paragraph mark followed by whatever is the second character.
It is a peculiarity of Find & Replace that ^p cannot be in Find What when using wildcards, instead ^13 is used. However ^p can be used in Replace With.
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