Skip to main content

Count Frequency of any Word in a Microsoft Word Document

Microsoft Word ScreenshotBefore you bombard me with your answers, please read the question in the post title again - It wants you to count the number of instances of a particular word (or a group of words) in a Word document or a text file.

Microsoft Word has a useful Word Count feature that counts the number of words in any open Word file - that's very useful when you are doing a story for a magazine or a newspaper that requires a specific number of words.

But unfortunately there's no direct way to count the number of occurrences of a particular word or sentence in Word. So here comes our hack:

1. Start MS Word and load the .doc file. Make sure that the cursor stays at the beginning of the document. (I created one from a blank document by typing =rand() multiple times)

2. Let's say you want to find out how many time the word "fox" is used in your document.

3. Press Ctrl+H (or Edit->Replace) to open the Word Replace Dialog.

4. Type Fox in "Find What" and Fox again in "Replace With" fields. Do a replace all.



5. Word will popup a confirmation message that "n" instance of Fox were replaced. And that's you answer.



No complex VBA macros needed. You can apply the same technique to even a group of words.

Update: Saket points to a cleaner and more safe hack. Do a Ctrl+F (or Edit->Find), click "Highlight all matching terms" and press Find all. Using this approach, you zero the risk of screwing your document. Thanks Saket.

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

PhishTank Detects Phishing Websites by Digg Style Voting

OpenDNS, a free service that helps anyone surf the Internet faster with a simple DNS tweak , will announce PhishTank today. PhishTank is a free public database of phishing URLs where anyone can submit their phishes via email or through the website. The submissions are verified by the other community members who then vote for the suspected site. This is such a neat idea as sites can be categorized just based on user feedback without even having to manually verify each and every submission. PhishTank employs the "feedback loop" mechanism where users will be kept updated with the status' of the phish they submit either via email alerts or a personal RSS feed . Naturally, once the PhishTank databases grows, other sites can harness the data using open APIs which will remain free. OpenDNS would also use this data to improve their existing phishing detection algorithms which are already very impressive and efficient. PhishTank | PhishTank Blog [Thanks Allison] Related: Google

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.