| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Evil text boxes in MS Word (boo!!) Thread poster: irishpolyglot
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Hi all!!
Obviously we base our work on the number of words in a document... but what do you do when the document has a lot of text-boxes included? How do you get a word count? Select all just skips the text boxes. I even had to translate a few documents that are entirely made up of text-boxes. I had no choice but to select all the text in each box separately and add them up to see the word count (I have Word 2007 btw). It took me quite some time... almost as slow as going through th... See more Hi all!!
Obviously we base our work on the number of words in a document... but what do you do when the document has a lot of text-boxes included? How do you get a word count? Select all just skips the text boxes. I even had to translate a few documents that are entirely made up of text-boxes. I had no choice but to select all the text in each box separately and add them up to see the word count (I have Word 2007 btw). It took me quite some time... almost as slow as going through the document with my finger tapping "one, two, three..."
Also while I'm ranting about text boxes, I can't find text with the usual find/replace option, which is handy for replacing repeated words/phrases (I do use Wordfast too, but I'm still learning) and many other reasons that find can be essential to translating.
But wait, there's more!!! When I select the whole document and change it to the target language for the spell-check, my good old friends the text boxes stay in the source language and the Spelling and Grammar check counts everything in those text boxes as a mistake... "ignore once", "ignore once", "ignore once" - my finger hurts more when there are text boxes
Could someone please save me from this madness? I am almost at the point of yelling at clients who innocently use text boxes. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!! And can anyone warn me about Wordfast related text-box issues?
Thanks! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jalapeno
Local time: 04:07
English to German
For the word count, use a third-party wordcount tool such as Anycount. Most of these will count words in text boxes.
Find and replace works just fine with text boxes in my Word version (Word 2002).
HTH
| | | | | Word to PDF, PDF to Word | Aug 10, 2007 |
I have this PDF converter called VERYPDF2Word, which has as one of its options to convert the pdf file into a word document without text boxes...
There used to be a free trial version at their website with the only restriction that you can use it only 10, 20 or 30 times for free -- can't remember now.
Perhaps that's a roundabout way of doing it, but if you have the time (you probably don't), why not give it a try?
| | | | John Di Rico 
France
Local time: 04:07
Member (2006)
French to English
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Tony M
France
Local time: 04:07
Member
French to English
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SITE LOCALIZER | Evil indeed! | Aug 10, 2007 |
Couldn't agree more!
If the document formatting has to be preserved, then one doesn't have a lot of choice; if not, then I'd be tempted to convert the whole darned thing to text sans boxes or formatting, for both working (if possible) and word counting.
I haven't tried this, but I imagine printing it out and OCRing it without formatting would yield a pure-text doc. — provided the OCR didn't need a lot of hand-holding, of course!
I did once find a w... See more Couldn't agree more!
If the document formatting has to be preserved, then one doesn't have a lot of choice; if not, then I'd be tempted to convert the whole darned thing to text sans boxes or formatting, for both working (if possible) and word counting.
I haven't tried this, but I imagine printing it out and OCRing it without formatting would yield a pure-text doc. — provided the OCR didn't need a lot of hand-holding, of course!
I did once find a way of copying each text box laboriously by hand into a doc., pasting 'unformatted text', which worked pretty well.
The worst nightmare I had was a HUGE Excel spreadsheet, a massively heavy document with high-res photos in it, where the vast majority of the text was in individual text boxes, AND they were formatted for Arabic language and R>L text to boot! That one caused me massive headaches — and I never did figure out why they'd used Excel in the first place, since they didn't actually exploit any of its spreadsheet functions at all.
I must admit now I usually demand a surcharge for the extra time spent messing around — I don't honestly think this sort of thing falls within the realm of 'ordinary run of work'. But of course that does presuppose that the sample text on the basis of which you accepted the job is actually representative of the rest. I've got a big job on currently that was originally sent to me as a nice, neat PDF, but in fact has to be edited in some ghastly text compiler format that is just totally un-user-friendly in terms of basic word processing functions.
Terry Richards (ProZ member) has come up with a very handy little macro that lets you select text boxes and change the language globally in PowerPoint, but AFAIK it doesn't work in Word; I wonder if Terry might be able to modify it, sounds like it would be a useful tool?
While on the subject of text boxes, does anyone know a way of globally changing the formatting attributes of existing text boxes?
[Edited at 2009-10-23 10:41 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tony M
France
Local time: 04:07
Member
French to English
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Now THAT's what I call useful! | Aug 10, 2007 |
Martin Wenzel wrote:
I have this PDF converter called VERYPDF2Word, which has as one of its options to convert the pdf file into a word document without text boxes...
Sounds like a really useful one, that, Martin!
Would you have the URL of their site, by any chance?
[Edited at 2007-08-10 07:52]
| | | | | Another PDF converter | Aug 10, 2007 |
Nice, hair style, Tony...
www.verypdf.com
| | | | Owen Davies
Japan
Local time: 11:07
Member (2007)
Japanese to English
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heikeb
Member (2003)
English to German
+ ...
Add a macro in Word for word count including text boxes:
------------------------------------------------
Sub WordsinTextboxes()
'
' WordCount Macro
' l
'
Dim Wordcount As Long
Wordcount = ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties(wdPropertyWords)
For Each ashape In ActiveDocument.Shapes
If ashape.TextFrame.HasText Then
Wordcount = Wordcount + ashape.TextFrame.TextRange.ComputeStatistics(Statistic:=wd StatisticWords)... See more Add a macro in Word for word count including text boxes:
------------------------------------------------
Sub WordsinTextboxes()
'
' WordCount Macro
' l
'
Dim Wordcount As Long
Wordcount = ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties(wdPropertyWords)
For Each ashape In ActiveDocument.Shapes
If ashape.TextFrame.HasText Then
Wordcount = Wordcount + ashape.TextFrame.TextRange.ComputeStatistics(Statistic:=wd StatisticWords)
End If
Next ashape
MsgBox ("The document has " & Wordcount & " words")
End Sub
---------------------------------------------
I don't remember who I got it from, but thanks to you nevertheless!
And here is a macro to change the language in the entire Word doc, including textboxes:
http://www.proz.com/post/219575#219575 ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tony M
France
Local time: 04:07
Member
French to English
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Macro help, please! | Aug 10, 2007 |
Heike Behl, Ph.D. wrote:
Add a macro in Word for word count including text boxes
Thanks a lot, heike, for passing on those 2 really useful tips.
Just one thing, though — has anyone please got the time to explain to me how to actually turn these scripts into a macro?
I'm not in the habit of creating or using macros very much, and I don't know how to convert the script into one; should I be doing it in VBE or MS Editor or something?
Sorry to be such a dunce, and any help will be much appreciated!
| | | | | How to add macros into Word (2003 and below!) | Aug 10, 2007 |
1. Open Word (duh)
2. Press Alt+F8
3. Enter a name for the macro (a short 'n sweet one, with no blanks or weird characters) and press Enter
4. Type the macro code or paste it from the clipboard (be sure to keep the surrounding "Sub <macro name>()" and "End Sub" instructions intact - these denote the beginning and end of the code for each macro
5. Close the macro window where you put the text
6. To run the macro, press Alt+F8 again, select the macro from the li... See more 1. Open Word (duh)
2. Press Alt+F8
3. Enter a name for the macro (a short 'n sweet one, with no blanks or weird characters) and press Enter
4. Type the macro code or paste it from the clipboard (be sure to keep the surrounding "Sub <macro name>()" and "End Sub" instructions intact - these denote the beginning and end of the code for each macro
5. Close the macro window where you put the text
6. To run the macro, press Alt+F8 again, select the macro from the list and click "Run"
(7. If you want to keep the macro, be sure to save normal.dot when prompted to or click the little diskette icon after step 4.)
HTH,
Benjamin
P.S.: When copying macros from this forum, you will want to copy the macro text from the box that appears when you click "Reply with quote". Otherwise, the macro code might not work as the forum system likes to garble anything that appears even remotely like HTML instructions. ▲ Collapse
| | | | irishpolyglot
Ireland
Local time: 03:07
French to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Macros are my heros!! | Aug 10, 2007 |
That's great!! I'll start using these macros to get around my textbox problems. Since I'm new to macros too, I'll have to investigate to see if I can find any other handy ones!
But I went through your process with the macro above and I got a syntax error
It's on the
Wordcount = Wordcount + ashape.TextFrame.TextRange.ComputeStatistics(Statistic:=wd StatisticWords)
line. I don't think it's how I copied it; I don't see any html code. Is it possible that I have to alter it somehow for Word 2007?
Thanks!
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irishpolyglot wrote: That's great!! I'll start using these macros to get around my textbox problems. Since I'm new to macros too, I'll have to investigate to see if I can find any other handy ones! But I went through your process with the macro above and I got a syntax error It's on the Wordcount = Wordcount + ashape.TextFrame.TextRange.ComputeStatistics(Statistic:=wd StatisticWords) line. I don't think it's how I copied it; I don't see any html code. Is it possible that I have to alter it somehow for Word 2007? Thanks!
wdStatisticWords needs to be one word, without a blank.
HTH,
Benjamin
| | | | | CompleteWordCount | Aug 10, 2007 |
I use this simple tool as well and it really helps!
| | | | irishpolyglot
Ireland
Local time: 03:07
French to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | all's good, the evil has been slain :-) | Aug 10, 2007 |
wdStatisticWords needs to be one word, without a blank
That worked a charm!
Cheers!
[Edited at 2007-08-10 14:55]
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