

To see some individual results comparing Google Docs to Microsoft Word in terms of word count, check out: In many cases, Google Docs and will pull ahead of Microsoft Word when you include symbols for most accuracy tests. However, you can put all the various Office programs through an accuracy test, as long as you have some pre-counted sample texts beforehand. On the other hand, if you want to appear to have a higher word count, you might want to use or Google Docs. However, for power users, there is no real answer for this question, as the answer differs depending on whatever organization is regulating your word count.Īs a rule, you could argue that if you want your wordcount to be smaller, you would use an application like Microsoft Office. In terms of immediate access, privacy, and ease of use, would be the best to use. However, unlike Microsoft Office, these applications generally do not have the ability for the user to change the rules of the word counter. “I live in the United Kingdom” (6 words) Other Office ApplicationsĪs the market leader, Microsoft Office sets the standard for almost all other office applications, so they mostly follow its ruleset. There are also no exceptions when it comes to acronyms, so U.K will count as two words. The exceptions are“_”, “-“, and the apostrophe. Google Docs counts almost all symbols as separator. The results will be displayed in a dialogue box.To run the above macro, highlight the text you wish to count the old-fashioned way, then click the Macro button in the View tab, then click “Run”.Press Control + S to save your macro, then go to File, and press “Close and Return to Microsoft Word”.
#CHARACTER COUNT GOOGLE DOCS CODE#
Note that if you use the code above, then your Macro should be called Word count, or alternatively you could change the “Sub Word count()” part to be called exactly what you named your macro.

To use the above macro, or to make your own macro, follow the subsequent steps: If Word count 1 Then Message = Message + "s" Message = LTrim(Str(Word count)) + " word" Word count = Int((Len(Selection) / 5) + 0.5) “I live in the United Kingdom” (6 words) Customizing Microsoft Office word count rules “I don’t think this is a bad idea” (8 words) However, Microsoft Office also comes with tools that allow you to change the way you count words these macros are for more advanced users, but can be quite handy for those who want to specify the exact definition of what counts as a word and what does not. This means that Microsoft Office will usually give you the lowest wordcount. Anything else is counted is generally counted as a part of a word. Microsoft Office (all editions) mostly keeps it simple empty space counts as a separator. “I do not think this is a bad idea” (9 words)

“I don’t think this is a bad idea” (9 words) Keep in mind that separators such as +, when entered on their own, will not count as a word! However, when you get more than one unit in between the periods, such as 615.12, then we count that as two words. Acronyms when separated by a period (such as U.K. The only symbols that are excluded as separators are brackets, along with the | symbol. Separators at include space, and all common symbols such as the comma, : and etc. As the code is not open source, there is no way for us to know for certain what these edge cases are. Please note that the rules below for Office programs are not exact, as there are many edge cases where the program may not behave as you would expect. However, many might want to use a pre-existing solution, so it is important to know exactly how each different word counters count words. On our algorithm page, we explained exactly why this is the case, and how you can create a word counter to suit your needs. Different word counters can return different results despite them all counting the same text.
