Word Count

[Dynamedix]

How do I count words in an English PDF document?

[Dave Merchant]

There's no built-in word count tool. In Adobe Acrobat you can use a console JavaScript:

var cnt=0;

for (var p = 0; p < this.numPages; p++) cnt += getPageNumWords(p);

console.println("There are " + cnt + " words in this file.");

[tobywilmington]

When i use the script :

var cnt=0;

for (var p = 0; p < this.numPages; p++) cnt += getPageNumWords(p);

app.alert("There are " + cnt + " words in this file.");

I keep getting word count 0 on all PDFs?

Any ideas?

[try67]

The document is probably scanned and was not OCR-ed, so it doesn't contain

any actual words in it, just images with text on them...

[tobywilmington]

The PDF is full text, when i copy and paste to word the count is 1,052 words - Im just wondering whether i need to edit the script at all?

Script i am using -

var cnt=0;

for (var p = 0; p < this.numPages; p++) cnt += getPageNumWords(p);

app.alert("There are " + cnt + " words in this file.");

[try67]

No, that script comes from the JS API Reference and should work. Can you

share the file?

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 10:15 AM, tobywilmington

[tobywilmington]

Hi Gilad,

It is happeneing with any PDF, ive just tried the ipad mannual - http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1595/en_US/ipad_user_guide.pdf

I have this now set up so when i open a pdf it runs the Java automatically but just doesnt seem to pick up words?

Cheers

Toby

[try67]

What do you mean, exactly? From where are you running this code?

[tobywilmington]

In Adobe Acrobat pro - im using this JS as a saved script, i think it runs through the debugger?

[try67]

So you're running it from the console directly?

[try67]

Also, are you selecting all of the code when you run it?

[Guest]

I'm attempting to use the same JS code in Adobe Pro version 10 and receive the "no words found" response. What and how did you finally resolve your issues? If you don't mind sharing....

Thanx

[try67]

That usually means that your file contains only images, no real text...

[try67]

I ran it on the iPad Manual file and the result was:

[tobywilmington]

When i run it directly in the console - the console replies as below

Sorry to be a pain!

[try67]

Yes, that's what I thought... You have to select all of the code (with the mouse) before running it.

[tobywilmington]

So sorry! Rookie!

Massive thanks

Out of interest - does this script have the potential to count images? that would be a huge help to myself

[try67]

It's a common mistake to make...

No, JS has no access to the images in the file, at all. Only to the textual content, and even that's limited.

[~graffiti]

Or, you could copy/paste into a Word document and do the word count there.

[Milo G]

You can also create an Action Wizard with Dave's script and by changing "console.printIn" to "app.alert" a dialog box will pop up with the page count.

[try67]

Actions are not available in Reader, only in Acrobat Pro.

And using an alert in an Action is counter-productive as it means you have to sit in front of it, clicking OK, OK, OK...

It's better to print out the result to the console, preceded by the name of the file that's being processed.

Then when the process is done you open the console and see all the results in one glance.

[alearn3]

On Windows platform you can use AnyCount Word Count and Character Count Software

It supports word count in 38 formats including PDF. Actually, it can count even on PC without Adobe Acrobat installed.

[Stauersboell]

I have used the below JavaScript, and it works well. But does anyone know, if it is possible to make a JavaScript that instead of counting words, counts characters including spaces?

var cnt=0;

for (var p = 0; p < this.numPages; p++) cnt += getPageNumWords(p);

console.println("There are " + cnt + " words in this file.");

[Test Screen Name]

You could write a script that looped through the words, got the number of characters in each one, and added together. You can't get spaces or punctuation, the spaces often aren't even there (just gaps). You could add 1 for each word, which would be approximate but not (for example) a solid basis for payment.

[try67]

Actually, you can get spaces and punctuation by setting the third parameter (bStrip) of getPageNthWord as false.

This code will count all the characters in a document:

var charCount = 0;
for (var p=0; p<this.numPages; p++) {
    var numWords = this.getPageNumWords(p);
    for (var i=0; i<numWords; i++) {
        var word = this.getPageNthWord(p,i,false);
        charCount+=word.length;
    }
}
app.alert("There are " + charCount + " characters in this file.",3);