How to Count How Many Times a Word Appears in Excel

1. Open the Excel document containing the text that you want to analyze. Select the first cell that contains the text. Hold down the 'Shift' key and select the last cell that hold your text. This will create a selection box around all of your text. Press 'Ctrl' 'C' to copy this information to the clipboard.
2. Click on a new worksheet at the bottom of the spreadsheet. If all the worksheets are currently being used, press the new worksheet button, which is located directly to the right of the last worksheet.
3. Select cell 'B1' on the new worksheet. Press 'Ctrl' 'V' to paste the information to this sheet. Select the letter 'B' above the pasted information to select the entire column.
4. Click on the 'Data' tab and then select the 'Text to Columns' button. This will bring up a small wizard window. Select 'Delimited' on the first page of the wizard and click 'Next.' Click on 'Space' from the given options and click 'Finish.' Each word of the text will now have its own cell.
5. Select cell 'A1.' Enter in the following formula: =COUNTIF(B:Z, 'x') where 'Z' is the last column that contains text and 'x' is the word you are searching for. Press enter and the number of times that word appears in the text will be shown in cell 'A1.' Select cell 'A2' and enter in the following formula: =COUNTIF(B:Z, 'x?') to also count instances of the word that are followed by a piece of punctuation.
6. Select cell 'A3' and enter in the following formula: =sum(A1, A2) to get the final count of how many times the word appears in the text.