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Setting Fraction Bar Overhang Spacing in the Equation Editor

Printing On Both Sides of the Paper

Turning Off AutoComplete for Dates

Ordering Search and Replace

Understanding Auto Line Spacing

Adding Comments to Your Document

Conditional Calculations in Word

 

Counting Words the Old Fashioned Way with WordBasic

Summary: Using the old editorial method of figuring out the number of words in a document. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 6, and Word 95.)

You probably already knew that Word provides a way to determine the number of words in a selection or in your entire document. Word has its own internal algorithms to figure out the proper count. This is great, if you need to know actual word counts.

Before the days of actual word counts, however, typists figured out the number of average words in a document. This was done by figuring out the number of characters typed, and then dividing that figure by five. For some purposes you may still need to figure word counts using this old-fashioned approach. This can be done with a simple WordBasic macro, as follows:

Sub MAIN
    Title$ = "WordCount"
    On Error Goto HugeString
    InSelection = SelType()
    If InSelection = 2 Or InSelection = 6 Then
        WordCount = Int((Len(Selection$()) / 5) + 0.5)
        WordCount$ = Mid$(Str$(WordCount), 2) + " word"
        If WordCount > 1 Then WordCount$ = WordCount$ + "s"
        MsgBox WordCount$, Title$
    Else
        Beep
        MsgBox "No text selected", Title$, 16
    End If
    Goto Done

    HugeString:
        MsgBox "Selection too large", Title$, 48

    Done:
End Sub

Tip #756 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95

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