An Easy Way to Count Items

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 27, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021


A while back I was working with a document that actually contained a list of movies in my home video library. Each movie title was on a single line, but as far as Word was concerned, each was a single paragraph. (In other words, each movie title had a "hard return" at its end.)

I got to wondering how many movies I had in my library, so I used a tried-and-true simple way to find out:

  1. Select all the items. (In this case I selected all the movie titles.)
  2. Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
  3. Click the Numbering tool in the Paragraph group. Each item (movie) is numbered by Word.
  4. Press the Right Arrow on the keyboard. Word displays the very end of the list where you can now see how many items are in the list.
  5. Press Ctrl+Z to undo the numbering.

That's it—quick and easy and you can tell how many items are in whatever group of items you selected in step 1.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13332) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.

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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Understanding the Select Case Structure

Programming structures are an important tool used by any programmer. The VBA language used by Word's macros includes ...

Discover More

Adding Excel Information to a Web Page

Besides saving a worksheet as a complete Web page, you can also save smaller portions of your data to an existing Web ...

Discover More

Inserting the Document Creation Date

One of the pieces of information tracked by Word is when a document was first created. Here's how you can access that ...

Discover More

Comprehensive VBA Guide Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is the language used for writing macros in all Office programs. This complete guide shows both professionals and novices how to master VBA in order to customize the entire Office suite for their needs. Check out Mastering VBA for Office 2010 today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Selecting Just the Word

Double-click on a word and Word selects it, plus some. It also selects any trailing spaces after the word. Here's a ...

Discover More

Removing Duplicates in Word

If you have information in Word such as e-mail addresses or part numbers, your document might include duplicates. This ...

Discover More

Lines Breaking between Double Spaces

Some people like to have one space between sentences, while others prefer two. For those in the latter camp, you may ...

Discover More
Subscribe

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.

What is 1 + 0?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


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.

Videos
Subscribe

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

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.