Microsoft Word's Word Count facility gives a reasonably accurate count of the number of words in documents, or sections of documents.

For Web content from Word, first make sure footnotes and endnotes are included in the count:

1. Go to the Tools menu and select Word Count.
2. Tick the Include footnotes and endnotes checkbox.
3. Click Close.

Now you can get a word count in a number of ways:

• Go to the Tools menu and select Word Count to display the Word Count dialog.
• Go to the File menu and select Properties. A word count is provided in the Statistics tab.
• Count the words in a specific section of the document by highlighting the section, moving to the Tools menu, then selecting Word Count.

• In Word XP and Word 2003 you can also use the Word Count toolbar (View > Toolbars > Word Count, or click the Show Toolbar button in the Word Count dialog):
  

  If opening from the Word Count dialog, the Word Count toolbar becomes active once the Close button in the dialog is clicked.

Note: There a couple of gotchas in the word count facility that you'll need to keep in mind:

• Words in text boxes and autoshapes are not counted.
• Words in cover pages etc. are counted.