Word 2007: word count wrong?

[Michael]

Hello,

I have an issue with some .doc files when opening in Word 2007. In some
cases the word count in the status bar is different of the word count of the
"Word Count"- window (CTRL+SHIFT+G) or the word count in Word 2003

Example file: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=79595

Word 2007 (status bar) show 61019 words
Word 2007 (Word count window) show 61010 words
Word 2003 also show 61010 words

This issue I have not with all documents, but only with some files and it
seems that I have this problem only with .doc files but not with .docx files.

(installed version of word: 12.0.6514.5000 SP2)

Any ideas what this could be?

Regards,
Michael

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

I can confirm what you're seeing. In addition... when I first click on the
count to display the dialog, the count shows the same thing that the status
bar says for a moment, and then it switches to 61,010. Older versions of
Word used to do that for certain documents, but I hadn't seen Word 2007 do
it before.

Trying to find out what it's miscounting, I deleted blocks of 50 pages at a
time until the two counts agreed. Then, I pressed Ctrl+Z to put the previous
block back, and the problem didn't come back. I pressed Ctrl+Z a few more
times, however, and the problem came back.

I've concluded that it's a bug.

But, to make matters even more interesting, when I opened that document
using Word 2010 beta, it has the count as 60,343--in the status bar as well
as in the dialog. I'm not about to count the words manually to try to
determine which count is correct!

But, I did experiment in Word 2010, beginning with a document containing
exactly 10 words (which I did count). I built up a document containing
exactly 1,000 words, including text boxes, section breaks, page breaks,
column breaks, footnotes, and tables. I then built it up to 100,000 words,
then 200,000 words, and then 400,000 words. At no point was the count
incorrect--nor did the status bar and dialog counts ever disagree. I have no
doubt that I would see the identical consistency in Word 2003 and Word 2007.

 

[macropod]

Hi Michael,

The difference may be due to the fact that the lower figure (which you also get via a NUMWORDS field) doesn't include words in
headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes, textboxes/shapes or hidden text, or shapes themselves. The higher figure may include all
those things.