ERIN WRIGHT: Hello, my name is Erin. And in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to make the most of Microsoft Word's word count tool. I know what you might be thinking. What's there to learn about the Microsoft Word word count tool? The number is right there at the bottom of the screen, and that's certainly true. 

Unless you've changed your default settings, the count always appears in the status bar below your document. But word's word count tool can do more than provide total word count. It can also give you the word count for specific sections, provide additional count statistics, and exclude text boxes, footers, and endnotes. 

To view the number of words in a specific sentence, paragraph, page, et cetera, select only that text. The word count in the status bar will then update to show the selected count out of the total count. Once you deselect the text, the count will return to the total for the entire document. 

At the end of this video, I will share six windows keyboard shortcuts that can help you make targeted selections quickly. To view the number of paragraphs, lines, and characters in your document, open the Word count dialog box by selecting the word count in the status bar or by pressing Control-Shift-G. Unless you've changed your default setting, word should include text boxes, footnotes, and endnotes in its word count. If you'd like to exclude those things, uncheck that option. The count will update immediately. 

As promised, let's close with a few windows keyboard shortcuts that make selecting specific text in Word a bit easier. To select everything from the cursor to the end of the paragraph, press Control-Shift-Down Arrow. To select everything from the cursor to the beginning of the paragraph, press Control-Shift-Up Arrow. 

To select everything from the cursor to the end of your screen, press Control-Shift-Alt Page Down. To select everything from the cursor to the beginning of the screen, press Control-Shift-Alt Page Up. To select everything from the cursor to the end of your document, press Control-Shift-End. And to select everything from the cursor to the beginning of the document, press Control-Shift-Home. 

Thank you for watching. If you'd like to see this tutorial in written format, please visit my corresponding blog post linked below. Feel free to leave me a comment if you have a question about Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word that you'd like me to address in a future video. And please subscribe for more tutorials on writing, editing, and document software.