MS Word - Word Count Issues

ChrisKiff
Hey guys,

I'm having an issue that I've never had with Zotero before.

When I insert a citation using the new input bar MS Word is including the full citation in my word count. Is this a bug that you are aware of/or is this just something going crazy with my pc?

Cheers

Chris

MS Vista SP2
MS Word 2010
Firefox 11
Zotero 3.0.3
  • Simon
    I don't think this has changed. Zotero doesn't (and can't) control what is included in the word count.
  • ChrisKiff
    Cheers for the fast reply!

    No worries, I'll just copy it into another document and remove the codes as a work around.
  • Cpearce
    Hi,

    I'm having the same problem. MS Word includes the entire citation in my word count.

    Removing the codes work, but that's not a very practical solution, as i want to check the word count a lot.

    Cheers
  • pstolt
    Hi,

    I have been having the same issue since a couple of months.

    The fastest way around it seems to be to mark your text and hit ctrl+shift+G. This calls up the word-count box which for some reason gives the correct number of words.

    Note: the codes are not always included in the word count. It seems to depend on the references. Try highlighting different references and see how the word count at the bottom changes.

    So it may be a Zotero thing after all?

    Cheers
    Pelle
  • Cpearce
    Thanks for the reply Pelle!

    The counts are indeed correct now when I use the separate word-count window. This is a simple solution!

    You're right about not all references acting the same way. Some give me just 1 word, as it should be, others give a word count of hundreds...

    Cheers,
    Christof
  • ktp.kti
    Thanks Pelle! That was a simple solution! You saved me a lot of time! :-)
  • kmohammadi
    Zotero just uses the general framework of "fields" that Word has provided to developers to create custom fields for various needs. The feature is mostly used for citation applications like Zotero or equation editors like MathType.
    Inflated word count is the fault of word because it is programmed to include the text of fields in word count. Nevertheless, we do not want word to count the text in citation fields, but we want it to count the text in other fields like bibliography. So the main problem is this: Word does not have any facility for developers to mark fields as to determine that the field text be counted in the word count or not.
  • bwiernik
    More recent versions of Word (2013, 2016, and later) don’t count the embedded content in fields in word count, only the displayed text. If you want an accurate word count, upgrade to a more recent version of Word.
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