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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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
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. 😉
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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