Add character count to status bar
In the age of content creation with Word dominating the market, everyone can agree that character count is often more important than word count. And it's a pain in the neck having to click word count 500 times when you're writing just to keep checking the character count...
It begs the question - what are bloggers and hired writers using to write short- and medium-form content? Surely there are any number of use cases that require a large percentage of writers to use character count, such as myself and many others who've had this question, including proofreaders, people who create subtitles, etc...
Here is a counter showing how many blog posts are written worldwide per day based on historical trends: http://www.worldometers.info/blogs/
We can also look here: https://www.quora.com/How-many-blog-posts-are-written-every-day
As a very conservative estimate, if even 30% of those blog posts were written using Word and even 15% valued the character count feature, that would mean about 125,000 bloggers per day are missing out on what should be a very basic feature. That doesn't include anybody else, such as proofreaders and subtitlers mentioned above... That's just the blogger count.
The problem is, Microsoft has no incentive to update "convenient" or "nice-to-have" features because you dominate the market. Hope to see this implemented in the future. Thank you!
Craig Bond
shared this idea
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16 comments
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Yisroel Adler
commented
I don't understand why people are still asking for it here? As noted by Bertel Schmitt 2 years ago this feature seems to have already been added to Word. (See screen-recording here https://i.imgur.com/8s7bnLJ.gif)
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Controlled Chaos
commented
teacher: use only 280 characters
me: spamming the word count button every half minute to see my character count -
Steinar Andersen
commented
surprised it has not been added yet..
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anon
commented
I'd love for this function to be included. Often, it truly is more important to know the character count rather than the word count.
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D for Socials
commented
Hi, Word Product Team. When will this get added?
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Samsonite
commented
Did this ever get added? I'm surprised it's not already added to Word 2019 or even in a small update
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Anonymous
commented
Three years and nothing happened... I think it's a very good idea to improve the status bar
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Anonymous
commented
I still would like to see the character count without needing to click on the word count all the time. The window that opens can not even be left there, one needs to close it to be able to continue.
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John Cozen commented
Betel:
Like you I looked, and looked, and looked, for this feature in version after version after version after version of MS Word. I'm glad they FINALLY implemented something that took them all of a hour of coding.
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Bertel Schmitt
commented
I take it back and beg for forgiveness. The character count is there. Right click on bottom status bar. Check "Character count (with spaces)"
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Bertel Schmitt
commented
After a long hiatus in America, where I was paid and measured by words, I now write again for European publications that pay and measure by the character. Please give us the damned character count. How hard could it be?
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Anonymous
commented
Yes, please. And make it *Live* Char Count along with *Live* Word Count.
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Nusagates
commented
Nice idea. I agreed with you, guys.
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Bob Sellars
commented
I'm writing an abstract for a research article and the journal instructions are for a "maximum of 3,600 characters". My first draft is longer than allowed and it's a pain to keep clicking on the word count button in the proofing section of the Review tab on the toolbar to check if my revisions are within the character count. A running total in the status bar would be much appreciated. It would seem to be a simple task for the MS Word team as the word count is already on the status bar.
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Anonymous
commented
yes, please add the option to show the character count in the status bar.
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Anonymous
commented
Yay!!!! I just made this same suggestion on Twitter today. But I'll thought about this probably 1,000 times over the past few years. It would be soooo nice to not have to cut/paste to a web-based character counter ALL the time.
