How to Count Words in a PDF

Why a PDF has no word count

A PDF is a description of what a page looks like, not an editable document. The free Adobe Acrobat Reader, Apple Preview and the PDF viewers built into Chrome, Edge and Firefox can all display and search the text, but none of them will count it. You have to get the text out of the PDF and into something that counts.

Method 1: open it in a PDF word counter (fastest)

Open the file in the PDF word counter and the word count, characters, sentences and reading time appear straight away. It reads the PDF in your browser, so the file is never uploaded, and it works on documents hundreds of pages long. Word documents (.docx) open the same way.

Once it is open, the text sits in an editable box: delete the reference list, headers or appendices your limit excludes and the count updates.

Method 2: copy and paste

1. Open the PDF in any viewer: Acrobat Reader, Preview, or your browser.
2. Click inside the text and press Ctrl + A (Windows) or ⌘ + A (Mac) to select all of it.
3. Copy with Ctrl/⌘ + C.
4. Paste into the word counter.

This works for most PDFs in a few seconds, and the count is done in your browser, so a confidential PDF’s text is never uploaded anywhere.

Two things to watch. Copied PDF text often has a line break at the end of every line; that does not change the word count, but if you want to reuse the text, the text cleaner will join the lines back into paragraphs. And headers, footers and page numbers come along with the body text — on a 30-page document that can add a hundred or so “words” that nobody would count. Subtract them, or copy the body pages in sections.

Method 3: open it in Microsoft Word

Word converts a PDF into an editable document when you open it.

1. In Word, choose File → Open and pick the PDF.
2. Word warns that it will convert the file. Click OK.
3. The word count appears in the status bar, or press Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + G for the full count.

This is the better option for a long document with tables and columns, because Word keeps the layout and you can delete the parts you do not want counted before reading the total. Complex layouts may convert imperfectly, but the words themselves usually survive.

Method 4: open it in Google Docs

1. Upload the PDF to Google Drive.
2. Right-click it and choose Open with → Google Docs.
3. Press Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + C, or go to Tools → Word count.

Google Docs also runs text recognition on scanned PDFs during the conversion, which makes it the easiest free option for a scan. The trade-off is that the file is uploaded to Google.

Method 5: Adobe Acrobat (paid)

The paid version of Acrobat can export a PDF to Word (Export PDF → Microsoft Word) and then you count in Word. The free Reader cannot.

Scanned PDFs

If you cannot select any text in the PDF — the cursor draws a box instead of highlighting words — the PDF is a picture of a page. There is no text to count until it has been through OCR (optical character recognition). For a page or two, screenshot each page and open it in the image word counter, which runs recognition in your browser. For a long scan, Google Docs runs OCR on conversion, as does the paid Acrobat. Check the result before trusting the number: OCR misreads smudges as characters and occasionally joins or splits words.

Counting part of a PDF

Select only the pages or paragraphs you need instead of everything, copy them, and paste them into the word counter. This is the quickest way to count a single chapter, or to leave out the reference list, which most essay word counts exclude.

Frequently asked questions

Can I count the characters in a PDF too? Yes. The same copy and paste works with the character counter, which gives the count with and without spaces.

Why does my count differ from the author’s? Usually headers, footers, footnotes and captions. The author’s count probably excluded them; a select-all copy includes them.

How many pages is my word count? Once you have the number, the words to pages calculator converts it for single and double spacing.