word counting and zotero

lesterx
To cut a long story short, I'm trying to do a word count in an MS Word file, in which I've used Zotero. It seems that when I use the word count facility in Word, in some files it actually counts ONLY the text (and not the references). But doing the same word count in another Word file, the word count is ALSO INCLUDING THE REFERENCES in the word count. So I thought that if I could just make a duplicate Word file to play around with, then somehow delete all the references, then I could be certain to be ONLY counting the text in the word count.
So, I'd like to find out EITHER a way to be certain that when I do a word count in my original Word file with references that it DOES NOT count the references, OR as described above, just a way to use a duplicate file and delete all the references, then do word count.
I've seen a few ideas on the net, but I'm scared that some of them might end up de-linking references PERMANENTLY from ALL my Word files that have used Zotero.
Any assistance gratefully appreciated.
  • adamsmith
    What exactly do you mean by 'the references' in this context. I'm my field several journal didn't include the bibliography/list of references in the word count and that's of course trivial.

    But removing any citation information is harder and also conceptually messy (is the "see" before a citation part of the reference?)

    What more precisely are you as after in which custom style and following which word count instructions?
  • lesterx
    After ranting for a while, I realized that when you do a word count in Word, there's a box there ('include text boxes, footnotes and endnotes') and if you de-tick the box, it will only count the text and not the references. It seems like for some random reason, Word was counting endnotes (what I have been calling references) on some files and not on others.
    Anyway, now I have realized that tick/de-tick box is there, it solves all my problems.
    Thanks anyway.
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