Skip to main content
Inspiring
October 10, 2012
Question

InDesign CS5 Word Count

  • October 10, 2012
  • 3 replies
  • 98665 views

Does InDesign CS5 have a built in word counter and if so how do I access it?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    Participant
    July 16, 2014

    You guys above are over thinking this haha.   If you don't want to count the words for the entire document just highlight the text you'd like to count then Window > Info (f8).

    kcrossleyAuthor
    Inspiring
    July 16, 2014

    Thanks for the tip.

    Guys (I'm one by the way) ALWAYS have a tendency to over complicate things.

    rob day
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 10, 2012

    If you are using OSX this AppleScript will get the document count:

    tell application "Adobe InDesign CS6"

        tell active document

            set s to every story

            set t to 0

            repeat with i from 1 to count of s

                set t to t + (count every word of item i of s)

            end repeat

            display dialog "The active document has " & (count of s) & " stories, with a total of " & t & " words"

        end tell

    end tell

    Colin Flashman
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 10, 2012

    Jongware also wrote a script to do this, but works for indb files too. This was featured from the indesignsecrets.com forum:

    http://indesignsecrets.com/forum/indesign-add-ons-scripts-scripting-and-plug-ins/word-count-a-book

    If the answer wasn't in my post, perhaps it might be on my blog at colecandoo!
    Steve Werner
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 10, 2012

    Place your cursor in your story, and choose Window > Info to open the Info panel.

    BobLevine
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 10, 2012

    That will give you the story word count. If you have a lot of stories you can use Sandee Cohen's old trick of doing a find change for a space. Find the space and replace with one. InDesign will tell you how many changes it made.

    Bob