How do you count words in an APA essay?

If you are doing a dissertation or academic essay, you should count the Words from introduction to conclusion, excluding tables, charts and other figures. Bibliography is not included as well. In dissertations, the abstract, acknowledgements, table of contents and appendices are also left out of the Word count.

That said, just select the text, by clicking on it. If you need to "jump" a figure, just make sure you press CTRL when you click in the second part of the document.

The Word count will show up in the left bottom corner (Word 2007), where you can see the Word count of the selected part / the total count of the entire document.