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

Which version of Word are you running?

At least in a subscription version (Microsoft 365), you should see an option to add the character count to Word's status bar.

Attached Images

charCountStatusBarWord.png (25.5 KB, 15 views)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

To get to the menu that Stefan shows, right-click on the Status Bar.

Hi Stefan,
Thanks for your response; This is very puzzling. I found today in a search somebody posted a screen cap from Word 2016 with the Character Count option available on the Status bar menu. Based on the information that I can get from my version of Word, seems like I should have this option too.


Attached are two screen caps describing the MS product that I am using. The third shows the options menu that I see when I right click on the Stats Bar.


If you know a secret, please share. Add-in maybe?


Thanks,
Art

Attached Images

	Scrn cap1.jpg (22.0 KB, 11 views)
	Scrn cap2.jpg (17.6 KB, 11 views)
	Scrn cap3.jpg (91.5 KB, 12 views)

Hi All,
With a little more sleuthing I found that, yes, in fact, I have Word 2016. Hope this helps solve the mystery of the Status Bar menu.
Please see attached.
Thanks,
Art

Attached Images

Scrn cap Version.jpg (40.9 KB, 12 views)

I don't have Office 2016 installed anywhere to check, but maybe the Word Count option is not a status bar option in that version.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

I do not have Word 2016, either. Character count is not available in Word 2010's status bar, either.

The Field{ DocProperty Characters } will give you the count. You could put it in a header and/or footer while working on the document andf then delete. Nothing with spaces, though.

Hi Stefan and all. Yeah apparently Character Count is not available in all versions and releases of Word. I'll just drop back to clicking on the Word Count on the Status Bar every now and then which will provide the Character Count.
Thanks to all, -Art