Display character count on Status Bar

[ArtZ]

Hi,
I am running Word that is included in the Office 2016 Pro suite. Recently, I've been using a chat window that limits my character + spaces to 1500. It does not provide active feedback on characters + spaces used or remaining.

It's nice to have a running tally of character + spaces as you type. Also it's not convenient to keep clicking on the word count to get the character count.

It seemed like it would be easy to track this on the Status Bar. The Status Bar is displaying word count but this does not help. If I right click on the Status Bar, the word count option can be checked or unchecked, however, there is no character count option on this menu. I have seen screen caps of the Status Bar showing the character count option on this menu.

I went into the File ---> Options menu but didn't see a way to a way to add this to the Status Bar options. Tool ribbon options, etc. can easily be modified but apparently there is no way to make changes to the Status Bar menu options. Or I just missed it?

Also was thinking that possibly this could be a an add-in?



Maybe I'm missing the obvious. Any help to modify the Status Bar menu to include character count option would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Art