Everyone whose work is related to translations or writing, from time to time it may be necessary to calculate the number of characters in the text, with or without spaces. How to do it?
In Word
In Microsoft Word, character counting is performed using the "Statistics" function in the "Tools" menu. You can find the function by the specified path in any version of the program. Word statistics will show the number of words, characters with or without spaces, double-byte and single-byte characters (this is not necessary for working with texts), as well as lines, pages and paragraphs.
If you activate the function after a fragment of text is selected, information on its length will appear in a special window. Otherwise, you will receive information about the entire document.
In versions of Word below 2007, with frequent use, it is advisable to transfer the function to the toolbar. To do this, you can drag the appeared window with statistics there or right-click on the panel and select the "Statistics" item in the list.
In Word 2007 and 2010, the number of words in a document can be seen at the bottom left. If you double-click on this place, a window with other statistics items will appear.
You can also count the number of characters in a document without spaces using fields. Position the cursor where you want to see the field.
For Word earlier versions:
- From the Insert menu, select Field. A dialog box will appear .
- In the left part of the window you will be offered to choose the category of the field and its value. In the category, select "About the document", and in the values - NumChars.
- Click OK and a number will appear at the indicated location indicating the number of characters.
For Word 2007 and 2010:
- From the Text menu, choose the Insert tool> Quick Insert, and then the Field option.
- Select the About Document category and the NumChars field value.
- Click OK.
The content of the field (number of characters) must be updated after each save of the document. If the field is not automatically updated, right-click on it to open the context menu and select "Update field" in it.
In open office
To count the number of characters in an Open Office document, they do the same as in Word. Statistics can be found under Tools> Word Count. True, it is not as detailed as in Word. A popup window will show only the number of words in the document (or highlighted passage) and the number of characters with spaces.
If you need to find the number of characters without spaces, you must go to the document search and enter the expression [: space:] * in the field - it means a space. By clicking Find All, you will see the number of spaces in the text that will need to be subtracted from the number obtained for characters with spaces.
In excel
Using the LEN () or DLSTR () function, you can count the number of characters in a cell. The resulting value will take into account not only spaces, but also hyphenation marks if text with paragraphing was placed in the cell.
Despite these drawbacks, the function is convenient, for example, when working with a large amount of text, when counting characters is only one of a number of tasks. Using a number of other formulas in Excel, you can keep detailed statistics of texts, read characters without spaces and exclude some others (Latin letters, punctuation, numbers).
However, if you need to count the number of characters without HTML tags or with any other options, it is better to turn to special programs or online services.