WD: Word Count Doesn't Count Words in Text Boxes

When you use the Word Count feature, Word does not count words that are typed in a text box.

To Count the Number of Words in a Text Box

1. Click the text box so the text box handles are visible.
2. On the Tools menu, click Word Count.

NOTE: Word will count only the words contained in the selected text box.

To Count the Number of Words in Linked Text Boxes (Word 97 Only)

1. Click the last text box in the chain so that the text box handles are visible.
   
   Do not include any of the other text boxes in the linked chain (include only the last one).
2. On the Tools menu, click Word Count.

NOTE: Word will count only the words contained in the selected text box chain. To select the text box chain, click the last text box in that chain.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

The Word Count feature displays the number of pages, words, characters, paragraphs, and lines contained in the text layer, including frames, of the active document. You can also view the number of words and lines in a document by clicking Properties on the File menu and then clicking the Statistics tab.

Word Count does not count the number of pages, words, characters, paragraphs, and lines contained in text boxes (see the workaround), headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes, or comments.