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Programmatically count characters in documents

  • 01/12/2024

The first character in a document is at character position 0, which represents the insertion point. The last character position is equal to the total number of characters in the document. You can determine the number of characters in a document by using the Count property of the Characters collection.

All characters in the document are counted, including spaces, paragraph marks, and other characters that are normally hidden. Even a new, blank document returns a count of one character because it contains a paragraph mark.

Applies to: The information in this topic applies to document-level projects and VSTO Add-in projects for Word. For more information, see Features available by Office application and project type.

To display the number of characters in a document-level customization

  1. Select the entire document.

    Word.Range rng = this.Content; 
rng.Select();

  2. Display the number of characters in the document in a message box.

    MessageBox.Show("Characters: " + this.Characters.Count.ToString());

To display the number of characters in a VSTO Add-in

  1. Select the entire document. The following example selects the active document.

    Word.Range rng = this.Application.ActiveDocument.Content;
rng.Select();

  2. Display the number of characters in the document in a message box.

    MessageBox.Show("Characters: " + 
    this.Application.ActiveDocument.Characters.Count.ToString());

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