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How do I get a word count for a PDF doc or for a selected passage?

Community Beginner ,
May 01, 2015 May 01, 2015

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How do I get a word count for a PDF doc or for a selected passage?

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Create PDFs , How to

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LEGEND ,
May 01, 2015 May 01, 2015

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Select text, copy into Word, use Word's Properties.

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Community Beginner ,
May 01, 2015 May 01, 2015

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That's the only way? Not so convenient with a long doc. Oh well. Thanks.

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Community Expert ,
May 01, 2015 May 01, 2015

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It can be done within Acrobat, but it requires a script. And it's more complicated with a passage. Basically that can't be done directly. You'll need to first do something like highlight the text using the Highlight commenting tool before a script could count the number of words in it.

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LEGEND ,
May 01, 2015 May 01, 2015

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You could export to Word if it's many pages.

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Community Beginner ,
May 01, 2015 May 01, 2015

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Thank you all--this is very helpful.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 28, 2016 Feb 28, 2016

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There is automated tool, which handles pdf word count. It can even count PDFs with scanned images using built-in OCR engine.

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New Here ,
Sep 10, 2012 Sep 10, 2012

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Does/can Adobe Reader have a feature that provides automatic word counts for documents? Translators need such numbers (actually, several metrics can be used, not just raw word count) as the primary basis for their fees.

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LEGEND ,
Sep 10, 2012 Sep 10, 2012

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I've never heard of translators being able to do their work successfully with PDFs alone, still less with Adobe Reader.

They are probably working in Word or FrameMaker, and these do have word counts.

If someone other than the translator needs a word count and has only the final PDF, perhaps the best option is to copy and paste to Word for counting metrics.

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 05, 2022 Nov 05, 2022

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Some translators unfortunately receive source documents in PDF in spite of protests to those customers.  At present I am looking at the PDF of a book of more than 250 pages and have no easy way to do a word count to confirm a quote for translation.  It frankly sucks to have to do a very messy copy/paste to another application just to do a word count. The addition of a simple word count tool for  Adobe Reader would be appreciated by many.

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New Here ,
Jun 14, 2023 Jun 14, 2023

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Try Foxit PDF reader (free version). It provides a pretty accurate word count for a pdf document.  It's a shame Adobe won't have this elementary function.

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New Here ,
Apr 02, 2024 Apr 02, 2024

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Few people have the time to be clumsily copying / pasting anything to anywhere in today's workplace!. Our work group is better to avoid Adobe PDF and keep things saved in MS Word until we are ready to publish the absolute final version.  This way we avoid blowing out the word limit for the Client, and having to retrospectively cull when it's over the word limit we are being paid for - time consuming and also unpaid re-editing. Could Adobe not look at this?

 

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Community Expert ,
Apr 03, 2024 Apr 03, 2024

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You have described the correct workflow. PDF is a final deliverable format, and in this sense, Acrobat is a document finishing tool.  So yes, changes should only be made to the original document. Then it is converted to PDF. 

 

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScripting
Use the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 03, 2024 Apr 03, 2024

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If someone receives a job in PDF and needs to quote a job based on the word count of the document, how is that to be accomplished? The pre-PDF source is not available.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 03, 2024 Apr 03, 2024

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Well then, you need a word count tool for Acrobat. Since you have Acrobat Pro, you can easily create a "Command" from the "Action Wizard" toolset. The JavaScript for this command has already been provided in this thread. 

Once the "Command" is created, it can be used over and over. In fact, it can be exported and loaded into Acrobat on another system. 

 

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScripting
Use the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

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Community Expert ,
Apr 03, 2024 Apr 03, 2024

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Or you could just download and install the free word counter tool provided by @JR Boulay 

https://www.abracadabrapdf.net/utilitaires/utilities-in-english/abracadabratools_en/

 

Yay JR, Thanks!!

 

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScripting
Use the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 03, 2024 Apr 03, 2024

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Client has Reader, no Pro. Office rules prohibit use of malware/freeware. Needs a word count using Reader.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 03, 2024 Apr 03, 2024

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Vell26982714m2b3 If you'd been curious enough to click on the link provided by Thom, you'd have noticed that this plugin also works with Reader.
And if you're not allowed to use freeware, that's no problem - I can sell it to you. 😉

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LEGEND ,
Sep 10, 2012 Sep 10, 2012

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Adobe Reader does not provide a word count feature, but you could use the online counter http://felix-cat.com/tools/wordcount/

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Engaged ,
Sep 15, 2022 Sep 15, 2022

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link is now dead (404)

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New Here ,
Oct 06, 2015 Oct 06, 2015

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I just had this issue in a PDF...

I actually hit "select all" (control A), "copy" (control C), then opened a Word doc.

In Word doc, I hit "paste" (control v)

In Word doc, under "review" hit "word count"

hope this helps

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New Here ,
May 20, 2017 May 20, 2017

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Good answer presuming you have Word.

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LEGEND ,
May 20, 2017 May 20, 2017

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Never heard of a translator who didn't have Word.

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 05, 2022 Nov 05, 2022

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There are many translators who don't use MS Word.

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 06, 2017 Nov 06, 2017

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You can use AnyCount PDF Word Count tool It can count words in Adobe PDF even without Acrobat Reader installed! Plus it counts words and characters in 37 more formats.

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