OpenOffice word count problem

batgirl · Nov 11, 2009

Open Office Writer can't count my words.
I've googled this and found no answers, but it happens both on my desktop computer (Ubuntu) and on my eeepc (Xandros), and with both the Tools word count and the Properties>Statistics word count.
I bring up either of those, and it tells me that my word count is 0. I might have a 20 page single-spaced document open, but my word count is 0. The statistics may tell me I have 728 lines, but I have no paragraphs, no characters, and no words.
So far my work-around has been to Select All and read the word count for Selection, but this only works with the Tools word count - which, for extra fun, sometimes gives me a different total for Selection and for Whole Document.

Since I'm doing Nano and have become wordcount obsessed, this is more of an annoyance than usual. Is there something obvious I'm missing? Is it because I'm saving as rtf instead of odt?
-Barbara

ejket · Nov 11, 2009

batgirl said:
Is it because I'm saving as rtf instead of odt?

That should be easy for you to check. In any case, I think that you'll generally run into fewer problems just using odt while you're thrashing out the text.

ChristineR · Nov 12, 2009

I have never seen this. Do you have something weird going, like an embedded document or frame?

Try this. Select all, copy all, paste it into a text only tool like Notepad, save it as text, close everything, open the notepad text, create a new OO document, select all, copy all in Notepad, paste into OO. Your formatting will be lost, but see if it can count your text now.

batgirl · Nov 12, 2009

Yeah, I've googled around and nobody else seems to have this problem. It happened to me with pretty well any document I've worked with on Open Office, whether I copypasted from something else (like Google Docs or from an older Word doc) or whether I began from a blank OpenOffice Writer document. It happens to me whether I'm working on the Open Office on my desktop computer, which I downloaded myself, or whether I'm on the Open Office on my ASUS EEE, which came loaded with Open Office.
I guess I can try working in odt, but I'd sure like to know why it can't see my words. Oh, and here's one I noticed this morning - I do Select All to get a word count, turn it off and write a couple of paragraphs, then Select All again and find that my wordcount is ... exactly the same.

Evidently I generate a field that erases wordcount. Fortunately it seems to be a very limited field.
-Barbara

Shadow_Ferret · Nov 12, 2009

If you select text, does it give a word count of the selected text?

Deleted member 42 · Nov 12, 2009

batgirl said:
Since I'm doing Nano and have become wordcount obsessed, this is more of an annoyance than usual. Is there something obvious I'm missing? Is it because I'm saving as rtf instead of odt?
-Barbara

I would test that first. I would also go look through the preference settings to see if there's something there that might trigger this behavior.

It is odd.

wanda45451964 · Nov 12, 2009

I down loaded open office on my computer, because my word expired, and I have to have something to format my new manuscript with and this publsiher wants alot of different things.
It drives me up the wall, had to print off two pages just from open office to find out how to do the page thing.

I hope after reading this about the word count that I am not going to have problem with that, that is the last thing that I need.

I guess all we can do is keep hitting certain buttons until we figure out what does what.

I hope you figure out the word count. I know the works processor does the word count good. If I could get it to do this odd and even page thing I wouldn't need open office.

Shadow_Ferret · Nov 12, 2009

I save in RTF, DOC, and ODT. I've never had problems with the Word Count not working.

Now, it does show 2 sets of word counts:

Current Selection
and
Whole Document.

Are both of those registering 0 when you do a count?

And what do you get if you select a section of text?

ChristineR · Nov 12, 2009

I found one other report of this in the Open Office support forums. It was from 2006. That person was content to select all his text before he did word counts. Have you upgraded to the latest version? Apparently word count has been a source of many bugs.

The thing where your word count doesn't "grow" when you type new stuff in appears to be related to a change in the way the word count was calculated. At one point the word count was not calculated until you requested it; now it's calculated when you type. So my wild guess is that part of your program thinks it doesn't need to calculate when you display word count, and part of your program thinks it doesn't need to keep track while you type. On the other hand, when you select text, it's different every time, so that requires some sort of calculation every time you request it.

If you can't get anywhere, I'd recommend signing up for the forums and sharing there. The other thing you might do is create a dummy document with ten words or so and e-mail it to someone (like me) who can open it and count its words. This at least will tell you whether it's your program or your documents.

batgirl · Nov 13, 2009

Last night I tried saving as odt, but the Statistics still didn't count my words - it will always count my lines if I hit Update, but my words, selected or unselected, are invisible to it.
Also I only have one paragraph, Statistics tells me.

If I select a section of text, it will count the words in that,
but the Whole Document still gets a zero wordcount (in the Tools popup).

If I select the whole text,
sometimes I will get two different wordcounts,
and sometimes I will get a Selection wordcount _and_ a Whole Document wordcount (again, using Tools) and they will usually be different.
I haven't spotted what makes the change.

Other than making my preferences as dirt-simple as possible (no smart quotes, no widows&orphans, no completing words or spellcheck) I haven't done anything with the settings, but I'll have a closer look tonight.

Ah, thanks for the forums link - this bug report seems to have some relation to my problem - there's even a mention of not counting words in rtf!
Probably I should download the latest Open Office - my EEE came with 2.0 - but I don't dare until after Nano. Urgh.

Wanda, I wouldn't worry about this for yourself - it seems to be a jinx on me and no-one else.
-Barbara

ChristineR · Nov 13, 2009

There seem to be multiple known issues with word counts, especially if you are saving in non-native format. I don't know why this would be the case, but I guess there were attempts to fix it in later versions, so if you're feeling brave, I'd get the new version. You can always uninstall and revert if the new version doesn't work at all.

Mara · Nov 13, 2009

I've got the newest version, and I've never had any problems at all.* I imagine updating would solve your problems, and I can't think of anything that could mess up.

*It hijacks my volume control buttons and makes them not function, so I have to switch focus to another program window to change volume settings. Mild annoyance.

OpenOffice word count problem

batgirl

Writting broad

ejket

Noobus Perpetuus

ChristineR

What happened?

batgirl

Writting broad

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

Deleted member 42

wanda45451964

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

ChristineR

What happened?

batgirl

Writting broad

ChristineR

What happened?

Mara

Clever User Title