Getting a word count from a pdf

Have you ever needed to get a word count from a pdf?

There are several options, depending on how locked down your pdf is:

1. You can save the .pdf file as a Word document, then open the Word version.
   Word will generate a count for you.
   
2. If you find yourself unable to save to Word, try saving your pdf in rich text format (rtf) instead. Then open that in Word, and get your count.
   
3. If neither of those work, you can open Word with a blank document, then open the pdf. Ctrl & A in the pdf, then Crtl & C to copy the whole document, then go to Word, and Ctrl & P to paste everything across. Give Word a few seconds, and it will generate a count for you.
   
4. Alternatively, you can download a zip file of OCRFeeder, install the software, and it will allow you to import any normally un-importable pdfs as Word documents (to use, File | Import PDF | Automatically detect and recognize all pages | Export to ODT).

But we don't always want to do step four. Sometimes we simply want a total count, and don't want to faff about with importing a whole document.

I recently struck a document which I couldn't 'save as', and would also only copy a page of text at a time: but all I wanted was the total words. This was a 50 page document, so copying it to Word page by page was not an attractive option!

I went online in search of a free and simple to use tool, and found https://wordy.com/word-count-tool/. All you need to do is to upload your file, and it will generate you a total word count.

So easy!


Sam