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Word Count

New Here ,
Dec 05, 2012 Dec 05, 2012

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How do I count words in an English PDF document?

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LEGEND ,
Dec 05, 2012 Dec 05, 2012

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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.");

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New Here ,
Nov 18, 2013 Nov 18, 2013

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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.");

js.png

I keep getting word count 0 on all PDFs?

Any ideas?

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Community Expert ,
Nov 18, 2013 Nov 18, 2013

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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...

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New Here ,
Nov 19, 2013 Nov 19, 2013

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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.");

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Community Expert ,
Nov 19, 2013 Nov 19, 2013

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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

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New Here ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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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

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Community Expert ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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

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New Here ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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

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Community Expert ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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So you're running it from the console directly?

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Community Expert ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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

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Guest
Sep 12, 2016 Sep 12, 2016

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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

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Community Expert ,
Sep 12, 2016 Sep 12, 2016

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

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Community Expert ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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

Snap1.png

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New Here ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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

Sorry to be a pain!

Untitled.png

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Community Expert ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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

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New Here ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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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

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Community Expert ,
Nov 21, 2013 Nov 21, 2013

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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.

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Engaged ,
Sep 15, 2022 Sep 15, 2022

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anyone know why the Acrobat console reports such wildly different word counts than other tools (e.g. Word)?

What is this script counting in addition to word breaks? I get differences of a couple hundred to over a thousand extra "words."

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Community Expert ,
Sep 15, 2022 Sep 15, 2022

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For example, Acrobat splits hyphenated words into two, so "right-handed" will count as two words, while Word counts it as one. If you can share a sample file that demonstrates this issue we can look more closely into it, but if Word behaves the way you're looking for, just export the PDF to Word and do the count there. That's the easiest solution.

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Engaged ,
Sep 15, 2022 Sep 15, 2022

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try this PDF. 

40,911 words per Acrobat

39,735 copy/pasted into Word

 

I'm very interested to find out where the discrepancy comes from, because then it can be corrected against.

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Engaged ,
Sep 15, 2022 Sep 15, 2022

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initially I thought it might be the metadata. The metadata of the above PDF, saved from Acrobat, comes to 37 "words" in Word. It's 157 copy/pasted from Word into Acrobat.

 

Big difference, but nowhere near the total difference.

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Community Expert ,
Sep 15, 2022 Sep 15, 2022

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Metadata info is not included in the word count.

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Community Expert ,
Sep 15, 2022 Sep 15, 2022

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Not the easiest file to work with... More than 12K words just on page 1! Can you find a smaller file that demonstrates this issue? Also, notice the page is cut off at the end of the page. The last line is duplicated on both pages, which might help explain the differences you're getting in the counts.

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Engaged ,
Sep 16, 2022 Sep 16, 2022

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We work with full-length novels. The word count is not unusual. I grabbed that file because it's in the public domain. I cannot share the full text of the books we work with.

 

I obtained that file from the Project Guttenberg website. It was HTML text that I saved as a PDF. I took off the headers and footers as they weren't part of the actual text. Whatever text is visible in the PDF, I did Select All > Copy, then Paste into Word, so the text is the same (or should be, let me know if you want the Word file that was created).

 

To your point, you could take _any_ PDF upwards of 1,000 words, run the word count in Acrobat, then paste the text into Word and run a word count there.

 

In my two examples — 1,000 words vs 46,000 words — the higher word count title resulted in larger number of "extra" words, though it was a smaller percentage of the total; while a smaller word count had a fewer number of "extra" words (naturally) though a higher percentage difference of the total.

 

Specifically: 1,000 words in Word vs 1,200 in Acrobat = 200 extra words or 20% variation; vs 46,000/47,000 or 1,000 extra words with only 2% variation.

 

The only reason I included the stats about the metadata is because the results are so wildly different: 37 vs 157! That's not a lot of text for such a large variation.

 

Perhaps that could be a clue as to what it is about the text that's causing it to be read so differently.

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