Word count still wrong

[ERR]

I quickly wrote up the following on version 2.4.0 , I have not fully poof read it, in fact already found a few spots that need to be corrected, it first counted 694 words I closed down the file then reopened it without changing anything got a new total 438 words could this be more correct than my 437 total? who cares, but the point is be careful of the word count. I was thinking of sending to a local motoring .... editor


Hello Alastair
I remember the good old days when there was no GST around, petrol prices were controlled by the government, I used to make sure I had my petrol tank full on the way home from work ready for when the budget came out that night, other idiots I will be kind and call them “motorists” used to wait for the budget then hope in cars to full up their tank, I believe some used to wait in long queue. I never lost any money on my practice in fact I think my best sore was I save a couple of dollars one budget night. Back then 1970's it cost me one dollar to go to work from Papakura to Mount Wellington and back.
I used to drive a Sokda other “motorist” used to toot at me all the time, I used to think “I don't believe all these people know me” my next car was a Toyota Corolla Van (three door) it gave me mixed feelings, on the down side, it was like loosing all my friends over night – nobody tooted at me again after that.

One thing I used to do is use retreaded tyres there was no tax on retreads and 20% on new tyres, there was a good price saving between the two. One day I picked up a new retreat they had put tyre paint on it, it look great. I put on the car a few days later when I looked at it all the tyre paint had come off, I felt totally ripped. My last use of using many retreads was when I went for a warrant of fitness some of the tread had come off on my month old tyre with only light use, I went back to the people I had brought the tyre as they were about to exchange it I asked “Could I pay the extra and have a new tyre instead?” They agreed, I hope the deal never went sour for him because I went away happy.

Just what kind of accident if any could of happened if the warrant of fitness check never picked up that missing tread, or maybe is this a good reason why we should keep away from retreads, but my question is if retreats are statistically just as safe as new tyres couldn't the government give that price advantage on retreads and save the motorist a little bit of money now again to put towards these sky rocketing petrol prices and save the planet at the same time from dumping all these used tyre that could be used again.

[r4zoli]

What OS(version), and which OOo version?
On winXP and OOo 2.4, wordcount 438.

[ERR]

Windows 98se

The error could be the way I type it (others might do the same), like as I write the story I partly proof read it, and delete words and put in new words and move text around.

When I reopened it I got a correct count, so I selected all the text and dropped in to a new page and still got the correct count.

[Hagar Delest]

On Ubuntu and OOo 2.4, also 438 words.
But the copy/paste operation could have a different impact on word count that continuous typing. I've added some words then deleted others but word count followed my modifications correctly.

I'm wondering if that could not be linked to your OS. OOo won't support Windows 98 from version 3 IIRC (OOo 2.4 will likely be the last for Win98/ME). Perhaps that OS has already some flaws that are specific.

Now that you've told us how you've discovered the bug, perhaps someone will be able to reproduce it.

[ERR]

Try making your reply in OpenOffice instead of say Firefox as I did on the earlier posting, or just next time you do any story.

But the real trick is to;

do your story,
count the words,
put the number in the document,
save your work,
close it down,
open it up,
check it again and see if the numbers are the same

this time it worked out all right.

[flights_of_fantasy]

I've come to this forum with exactly the same problem. I was looking to see whether updating to the new version of OO would solve my word count issue, but it looks as though it won't.

I currently use Open Office 2.3.1 on a laptop running Windows XP Home Edition (sp2), and this word count problem has been a niggling irritant for a while now. As a writer I aim for a target of 500 words a day so I mainly use the word count feature as a measurement of my progress. Some days 500 words are no problem, while on other days I feel like they're being cut out of my skin. You can imagine how hard it is to 'lose' a hundred or so words on those days.

I've not yet identified what it is that causes the problem, but I do know a rough and ready way to get around it. I try to make a habit of saving the document and doing File --> Reload before I do any word counts. Whatever is happening, doing that seems to clear it without the inconvenience (and time wasting) of closing down the file. And you seem to then get a stable word count. I save all my documents as .doc files (MS Word 97/2000/XP) to ensure compatibility with my editors, who all use Word. (I don't think this makes any difference, but I thought I should mention it!)

However, three days ago I was writing something for a challenge, and it had to be within a 2,000 word limit. I spent all afternoon writing, editing, re-writing, re-editing, changing words ... everything I could to get within the word limit. Although I saved my work regularly, I forgot my usual practice of reloading the document. My word count was at 1,999. I saved the doc before closing it down to move the file to my other computer. When I opened it up again on my desktop, (running Vista Home premium and OO 2.2) the word count had dropped by almost 150, although the document was exactly the same. The important point to note here is that I hadn't lost any of my work. No words had 'dropped out' of my document; it was identical to the one I'd saved on my laptop in every way. The word count feature was just registering a lower figure than before. I made a note of the new word count and closed the file down, opening it on Word. Word measured the same count as OO's new, lower figure.

I've tried recreating the problem, to see if there's something I'm doing that's triggering it, but it tends to happen more often after a few hours of writing and editing than if you just scribble down a couple of hundred words, or copy/paste stuff into a document hoping to make the error happen. One other thing to mention is that once the word count has dropped, it stays dropped; as though whatever was confusing the issue has been cleared, so sending the file to someone else to look at (as was suggested in one entry on the issue list) would seem to be a waste of time. In fact, half of the problem with this issue is that you don't realise it's happened until the count has 'corrected' itself!

Despite this problem, I still prefer working in Writer than in Word. I'll guess I'll just have to continue making allowances for its little idiosyncrasies.

[floris v]

Word and OOo count words in different ways, especially things like words with hyphens in them. I don't know what OOo does with the word count stored in the document hen it saves a file in Word format, but it's possible that it uses the Word method instead of the OOo method. In that case you'd get a different word count.

[floris v]

I tested this on a document I'm working on, with over 45,000 words. Word counts 45189 words, OOo three less. A series of small edits and saves didn't change that beyond what could be expected. The only time when I get such oddities is when I have footnotes in my document. Then OOo can count the words in the main text and ignore or include the footnotes. If OOo arbitrarily flips that setting you might get that kind of result, but I don't know if it does. I'm guessing here, so don't kill me if I'm wrong, but you may have to look at special things you have in your file. Is your file just plain text without tables, comments, footnotes and endnotes?

[flights_of_fantasy]

All my documents are fiction, so there's no tables or footnotes. In fact, I tend to use very little formatting. The font and font size remain the same throughout, except for the chapter headings, and the only special character I use is the EM dash. I don't even have page numbers. I do use a lot of dialogue, and I sometimes (but not always) use custom quotes to replace the plain double quotes for the other sort.

The issue with the word count doesn't only happen at the point when I save the file. Also, the frequency seems to relate to how much editing I've done. A little editing produces no changes, but if I spend a couple of hours tinkering with chapters I've already written, that can be a different story. There have been plenty of occasions when I've saved a document in Word format without any drop in the word count. (and, generally speaking, they were all very similar documents in terms of content)

I'll make a note of the circumstances when it happens in the future. You never know, something useful might come from it.

[floris v]

If you're having trouble like that, something may be wrong with your user account settings. Make a new user account in Windows, open the file from that account and see what happens. If that 's too much trouble, or of it doesn't work, you can use the old way of counting words, which will give you a fair approximation: manually count the number of words on a few lines (20 to 40 is good enough; include lines at the end of a paragraph, but don't overdo it) and take the mean. Count the number of lines on a page. Multiply the number of lines on a page with the mean number of words on a line. That's the number of words on a (full) page. Multiply by the number of pages. You can refine it by calculating the mean number of lines on a page.

Hope that helps.