How do I track my novel’s word count in a spreadsheet?
One row per writing day: the date and the manuscript’s total. Formulas work out the rest — words today, words to go, and how many a day the deadline now needs.
Log the total, not the day
Most trackers ask how many words you wrote today. Enter the manuscript's whole count instead and let a formula take the difference. It is one number you can read straight off your writing app, and a day spent cutting shows up honestly as a negative.
Word count tracker
| Date | One row per writing day. |
|---|---|
| Total words | The manuscript’s whole count when you stop. |
| Words today | This row’s total minus the one above: =B3-B2. |
| Words to go | Your goal minus the total: =$H$1-B3, with the goal in H1. |
| Days left | Deadline minus today: =$H$2-A3, with the date in H2. |
| Needed per day | Words to go divided by days left: =D3/E3. |
Copy the header row for a spreadsheet
Date Total words Words today Words to go Days left Needed per day
Setting it up
Paste the header row into row 1 of a new sheet in Google Sheets or Excel. Put your goal in H1 and your deadline in H2. Type the first date and total in row 2, then write the formulas once in row 3 and fill them down. The first row has no day before it, so it has no words today.
A chart of Total words against Date is worth the thirty seconds it takes. A flat stretch is easier to see than to admit.
In Tabularia
Tabularia counts the whole manuscript in one place, so the total you log is the header's number, with no chapter files to add up. Its goals cover the day and the book. What it does not keep is a day-by-day history, which is the job this sheet does.
Tabularia in brief
- What it is
- Tabularia is book-writing software for drafting, navigating, and revising a complete manuscript, on every device you write on.
- Price
- The Free plan includes the whole writing application, with no limit on how much you write. The Cloud plan adds backup, sync, sharing for review, and publishing for $18 a month, or $172.80 a year.
- Runs in
- A browser: Chrome 125+, Edge 125+, Firefox 140+, or Safari 18+. It installs as an app and keeps working on projects you have already opened while you are offline.
- Opens
- TXT, Markdown, RTF, HTML, DOCX, PDF, EPUB, Fountain, plus Scrivener, Obsidian, and novelWriter projects and Notion exports.
- Saves as
- HTML, DOCX, EPUB, PDF, Markdown, plain text, Fountain, or straight to a printer. The Cloud plan adds a Project archive of the whole project.
- Status
- Public Beta. This page was last checked on September 25, 2026.
Try it on your own manuscript
Nothing is metered: as many projects as you like at any length, the outline and minimap to move through them, drafts and markup mode for revising, snapshots to return to, sheets and timelines beside the page, and export to DOCX, PDF, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, plain text and Fountain. Bring in what you have already written and read it back as a book.
The Cloud plan is $18 a month, or $172.80 a year, and adds backup, sync across your devices, sharing a manuscript for review, and publishing your work as a web page — the readers and collaborators you invite do not need a paid account of their own. Tabularia is in Public Beta and shipping steadily; the release notes record what has landed.