Word Count (CS4)

[Guest]

Is there a "Word Count" feature for InDesign CS4 that will work for an entire document?

[Peter Spier]

Be careful what you ask for. Do you want to include running headers and footers? Page numbers?

[Guest]

The document is a "flat sheet", two pages. No headers, no footers, just text boxes.

[tomaxxi]

If you have just one Story then you can select all text and look at Info palete. Or, maybe it can be done through some short and simple script.

--

tomaxxi

[Peter Spier]

OK, that's a simple document, but a "feature" must work not only for single pages, but for 1000 page books, too.

A total word count might indeed be a useful thing, and it might even be scriptable if you can figure out a way to decide which stories to include or exclude (Hint: Including all storores is probably pretty easy, but will also pick up headers and footers and such, though you might be able to exclude stuff from master pages).

For a two-page doc you can put the cursor in each story and read the word count in the Info panel. Write them down and add them up.

[Harbs.]

A very simple script will do it...

alert("There are "+ app.documents[0].stories.everyItem().words.length +" words in the active document.")

Harbs

[ryan_kiefer]

This one works, if you don't have any words in tables.

I tested this by deleting words in a table. I got the same count before and after deleting.

Is there any way to force it to include table text?

[IngeniousJenny]

Never used a script before in Indesign, but this worked beautifully - thanks!

[flying_so_low]

That there still is no built-in word count in CS6 is difficult to believe - it's the most basic functionality. Retrieving total WC for a book or a document should be no more than a click away. Just bizarre.