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July 20, 2020
Answered

Number of times a certain word is repeated. How to know?

  • July 20, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 4237 views

The "Find" field does not show how many times a word is repeated in the document, which is exactly what I want to know. It just locates the same repeated word in the file, one at a time. Help plz. Hope you all are ayt. Hugz

Correct answer Manan Joshi

As Barb mentioned if you could let us know what you are trying to do then maybe we could help you with some good ideas. However if the need is to use the Find/Change dialog to get this information then do the following

  • Search the string like "Find"
  • Enter the same string in the Change to field as well
  • Now the change all button is active, click it and the replacements will be made which will practically make no change and a pop up will display showing the no. of instances changes. This is your result

-Manan

3 replies

Barb Binder
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 21, 2020

a pop up will display showing the no. of instances

Very clever, Manan!

 

~Barb 

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
Torsor
Participant
January 31, 2023

Another scenario which led me to this page is that I have a list of names as part of a schedule and I want to have a count of how many times a certain name appears as not all employees can do the same jobs so its tough to determine if one employee is being asked to do significantly more than another. A word count feature would really be useful.

Manan JoshiCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 21, 2020

As Barb mentioned if you could let us know what you are trying to do then maybe we could help you with some good ideas. However if the need is to use the Find/Change dialog to get this information then do the following

  • Search the string like "Find"
  • Enter the same string in the Change to field as well
  • Now the change all button is active, click it and the replacements will be made which will practically make no change and a pop up will display showing the no. of instances changes. This is your result

-Manan

-Manan
July 21, 2020

Hi Manan,

many thanks for sharing your knowledge,

 

I'm gonna try this and then give the feedback,

Greetings

Barb Binder
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 20, 2020

Hi Renato:

 

This may be accomplished via scripting, but this is not a feature that is included with any version of InDesign.

 

I'm trying to figure why you are trying to do this—maybe we if we understand the scenario we can come up with solution that doesn't require scripting. For example, you can index every occurrence of a word and then create a list of every page within a document or book that it appears on. 

 

~Barb 

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
July 21, 2020

Hi Barb,

many thanks for taking the time.

 

I'm working on a sports publish about all the games played by a certain national team, its lineups and its goalscorers through the 300 matches played. Therefore, what I have been assigned to do is collect all of the data regarding each and every player, so that we can with precision say that, per example, player A has featured in 57 matches and scored 14 goals. All of the raw data is inserted in the InDesign file, but counting for each and every player would take too long. A way to just insert the name of the player and have the count done automatically would be extremely helpful.

 

Regards