How to Find Word Count on Google Docs

Google Docs shows a word count in a corner of the screen by default, and still half the people searching for it are looking in the wrong place. Here is where it sits, how to open the full panel and how to make it count a selection.

The shortcut everyone should know

Press Ctrl and Shift and C on Windows or Chromebook, or Cmd and Shift and C on a Mac. A small window opens with words, characters, characters excluding spaces and pages. Escape closes it.

This one shortcut covers the overwhelming majority of use. It works in an empty document, in a shared document you only have comment access to, and inside the mobile apps where the keyboard is hidden behind a menu button.

The menu route

Open the Tools menu and choose Word Count. The same panel appears. Nothing else in the menu is needed and nothing is greyed out, so this route works even in a document where you have view only access.

Counting one section

Select the text first, then press the shortcut. The panel now shows two figures for each metric: the selection and the total. This is the only reliable way to check a single section of a long document, and it is far quicker than copying text into another tool.

Keeping the count on screen

In the bottom left of the document window there is a small line reading something like 1,204 words. Click it and the full panel opens. Open the Tools menu and choose Word Count while a document is open and you can enable Show Word Count While Typing, which turns that footer line into a live counter.

Whether that footer item appears depends on your document width and window size. On a narrow window Google hides it to save space, and it reappears when you widen the browser.

Why the number can disagree with Word

Google Docs counts words the same way Word does, splitting on whitespace. Discrepancies almost always come from three things: footnotes, which Google counts separately, hyphenated compounds, which can split differently, and text in drawings or text boxes, which some versions exclude from the total.

On mobile

In the Android and iOS apps, tap the three dot menu in the top right and choose Word Count. The figure is not shown by default and there is no shortcut, so the menu is the only route.