Getting word counts from Microsoft® Excel files is a common and frustrating task for translators and writers and general.
One common approach is to save the worksheet as a text file, then open that in Word and use the Word Count feature. This approach has some problems, though: you can only save one worksheet at a time, and text in text boxes isn’t saved, so you could end up with a word count that’s too low. Not to mention the time and hassle involved.
About a year ago, I did a huge translation that literally consisted of hundreds of Excel files and thousands of worksheets. Counting the words in each file using the MS Word method would have driven me batty.
If you use Windows and often need to get word counts from Excel files, I recommend my free program, Count Anything. Just click the “Count” button, drag and drop your Excel files into the dialog, and click OK.
You’ll end up with a nicely formatted report that you can drill down on, print, or save as an HTML or text file.
16 replies on “Tip: Getting word counts from Excel files”
I want to find good pop music. Help me please.
I don’t know, but if you find some let me know!
Hi Ryan,
Lovely little tool and very useful indeed!
Thanks a lot.
Trisha
Hi, This tool sound great, Does it work on Mac?
Unfortunately, no, it doesn’t work on the Mac yet.
Also use word count software is best software for count words in Microsoft word and excels files. Also use this software for count words in word and excels files and makes excel is more powerful.
http://www.technocomsolutions.com/word-count-tools.html
What a great tool!
Thanks!
Hello Dear Ryan Ginstrom,
The programme works well with Roman fonts.
I tried it for Unicode compliant font “Mangal” for Hindi script “Devanagari”. Unfortunately it did not work.
Can you halp?
Regards,
Ravi nandan sahay
Hello Ryan,
tnx for the tool, my girlfriend is a NL-RU-NL translator and she appreciates it greatly. U talk about a Text Dump utility that comes with the setup, I just cant seem to locate it. Any pointers?
Tnx again.
Regards,
Serge
Please look under the Start Menu > All Programs, then Count Anything > Text Dump.
I’m glad I found this! I’m a translator, and I’m trying to figure out how to count words in Excel. I just have one question/issue… what about the words that I am not supposed to translate, such as titles that are already translated? Is there a way to eliminate these ‘untranslatable’ things from the word count without hassle? If you can tell me an easy way to do this, then I salute you!
A very handy tool indeed. Many thanks to you all the way from Sri Lanka! – Thilina
A very useful tool, thank you. but is it possible to count words excluding coding/script?
Hi there,
Could you please let me know if “Count Anything” gives you a number of repetitions as well?
Thanks,
Carmen
No, but Analyze Assist should do it:
http://ginstrom.com/AnalyzeAssist/
Thank you!