Did you know that MS Word does not count words within text boxes and other Word elements?

Just do a 'Select All' in Word, and you'll see - none of your text in Text Boxes is selected.

I just had a trans full of text boxes, did a word count with MS Word which gave me 3,098, recounted it with this little utility I found, and it gave me 3,650 - a difference of 552 words.

Thanks to sheer frustration and Google, this is where I found the solution:
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/CompleteWordCount/
Note that when you save the file from the site in IE, it will automatically try to save it as a .doc file - just change it to .dot and follow the rest of the author's instructions.
I did a manual count (ran an individual count of each text box in Word, then added those totals to Word's count of the whole doc) to make sure this utility works properly, and it does.

MS Word Count

Complete Word Count

I sent her a note of thanks, and she wrote:

"Thanks for your email. I'm glad you found the utility useful. I originally did it for academics and students who had strict word limits to comply with. I never thought it might be useful for translators!"

Drop her a note of thanks if you find this helpful - I'm sure she'll be pleased!

Originally published at ProZ by Karen Michelle Price (Canada)

Attached file : MS_Word_Count.jpg (33 KB - 1283 downloads)

Attached file : CompleteWordCount.jpg (34 KB - 1268 downloads)

Originally written by Denis HAY on January 16, 2004 8:54 AM So, the gold chocolate medal goes to Niki today

Thanx Denis,

But in fact the medal should go to Karen Michelle Price as she was the one who discovered this tool for the translation community.

NK

Another utility that offers this type of word count is FreeBudget

http://www.webbudget.com/freebudget/features.htm

It also lets you set your price and export a count file in various formats, which is extremely useful if you have large numbers of files. I often send customers printout of the list of files with (line) counts along with my invoices.

I've been using it for a while now and highly recommend it.

Originally written by Daina Jauntirans on January 16, 2004 3:43 PM Another utility that offers this type of word count is FreeBudget I've been using it for a while now and highly recommend it.

Hi Daina,

Yes, FreeBudget is also a very nice tool. I also use it and would subscribe to your recommendation.

NK

One more tool is AnyCount.

Here is a comparison of AnyCount and MS Word count features. http://www.anycount.com/TextCountComparison.pdf

It produces quick and exact automatic counts both in words and in other volume units for all common file formats (including images). And it is easy to use. http://www.anycount.com