Word: Number of rows and/or columns in a table
November 12, 2012Jeff wanted to know how to find out how many rows he had in a very long table in his Word document. Word Count doesn’t tell you — it tells you how many lines in the document, but each cell (except one) in a table is treated as a ‘line’ for Word Count purposes.
You can find out how many rows (and/or columns) there are in an individual table by checking the table properties. Here’s how:
- Select the entire table. This selects all rows and columns.
- Right-click on the selected table and select Table Properties from the shortcut menu.
- Click on the Row tab — the number of rows selected is listed at the top of the dialog box.
- Click on the Column tab — the number of columns selected is listed at the top of the dialog box.
- Click Cancel to close the Table Properties dialog box.
NOTE 1: If you now select another table to check its number of rows and columns, you may find that when the Table Dialog box opens to the last-viewed tab (Row or Columns), no numbers are displayed. Just go back to the Table tab, then click the Row or Column tab again and the number should display. If it doesn’t, save and close the document, then close Word. Reopen the document and try it again (see my comment dated 17 December 2022).
NOTE 2: Merged cells are mostly treated as though the rows and columns existed as they did when the table was first created. However, if you’ve merged all the cells from several adjacent rows, the row count will reduce.
CyberText Newsletter 
Ha :)
Simple, but clever. Good job!
Hi,
Is there any way to automatically display this information. Say I want to enter a new line outside the table like “The table contains x rows”, where x is the no. of rows. I think the only way to go is to row tab , find the column no. and then manually enter it.
Do you think this can be done via quickparts or anything so that if even if I update the table, the statement updates itself.
Hi Jithin
I did a quick search of the Microsoft Office forums, and found these potential answers within two minutes:
* http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-word/count-table-rows-and-add-value-to-caption/45c4372c-3e2f-4d7c-b3cf-d4d245d9ec7e
* http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/officeversion_other-word/counting-number-of-rows-within-a-table/5a6a72d6-27fc-47ac-8f31-ec22130eb69b
–Rhonda
great ! Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the trick.
Thank you so much for sharing. For counting a table of 1 200 rows, your instructions were desperately needed.
I’m using Office 2013. I’ve followed your instructions, but the row tab of “table properties” does not show a count as in your example. :( Where your example has “Rows 1-84:”, my computer just has “Rows”. Is this caused by the version I’m using, some setting I’ve enabled or disabled, or something else? (Please don’t make me count them all by hand….)
Hi ragged-gothic
I wrote this when I was using Word 2010 for Windows. I’m currently using Word 365 for Windows, and it still works for me. BUT… I did notice something weird—after I initially selected the table and checked the row numbers were still listed (as per this blog post), I put my cursor in a cell and went to Table Properties again. This time I saw what you saw. So I selected several rows and the the whole table again, and the number of rows is no longer reported.
I wonder if this is a bug! Try saving and closing the document then close Word. Then reopen the document and see if you can get it to work. I tested this a couple of times and when I check Table Properties for the table the first time, it seems to work, but if you do something else in the table and then check table properties it doesn’t seem to work.
–Rhonda