Line Count Macro

[L. Matney]

Can anyone help me set up a macro that will do a line
count of actual text in a document? I know next to
nothing about macros, etc., so if anyone can be of help I
would really appreciate it. The line count tool in Word
is not helpful because it counts all of the lines in a
document, including the blank ones. I need something that
will count only the lines that have text on them, even if
it is just one letter.

Thanks,

L.

 

[Beth Melton]

They aren't really blank lines - they are empty paragraphs. Empty
paragraphs are just that, paragraphs with no text. The majority of
Word features, Word count, sorting, pagination options,
bullets/numbering, etc were designed to work with paragraphs that
contain text - not empty ones. Formatted space between paragraphs
should be used instead.

I would replace all of the empty paragraph marks and add formatted
space:

- Go to Edit/Replace
- In the Find What text box type: ^p^p
- In the Replace with text box type: ^p
- Select your document and either press Ctrl + 0 (on the alpha pad) to
add 12 pts of space before each paragraph or go to Format/Paragraph
and add space Before/After the paragraphs. (Actually I would modify my
paragraph styles and add the formatted space but we'll save that for
another lesson. ;-)

Then the Word Count should work as designed.

Note: the Find/Replace will find all occurrences of two paragraph
marks in sequence (when you press Enter Enter to create a 'blank
line') and replace them with a single paragraph mark)

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

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