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Two different word counts in Word

Anonymous
2025-03-28T20:38:15+00:00

Word is showing two different word counts for documents, without any text or pages selected: one is in the word count box accessed in the review window or by clicking on Word Count at the bottom of the window, and the other is the word count which shows at the bottom of the window.

The inset box has two options, one of which includes footnotes. But neither matches the word count shown in the bar at the bottom. This is true of all documents.

Why are there two? Which one is correct?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-03-29T01:51:50+00:00

    > Why are there two? Which one is correct?

    The number in the dialog box is the correct value.

    These numbers are generated by two different processes. The dialog box immediately calls its process to do the counting when you open it. The process used by the status bar is run in the background. When you have a huge document such as yours (380 pages), it takes longer for the background process to finish.

    > This is true of all documents.

    Are you sure? Create a 1-page document with some text, and see if the two counts are in agreement. I suspect they will be equal because the background process finishes very quickly.

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