Hi Cristina Fumagalli ,

Trados Studio word count usually differs from the word count given by Word, whether the document has footnotes or not.

Having said that, do you mean that the word count numbers are different or that footnotes have not been extracted at all by Trados Studio?

I mean that the word count in word matches the word count in Studio only if the document does not have footnotes. The word count differs only if the document contains footnotes because Studio doesn't count footnotes (Word yes if the option "include footnotes and endnotes" is selected). That's what I noticed... basically it seems that the "analyse file" option in Studio does not count footnotes... 

Cristina Fumagalli 

Can you demonstrate that, or provide a small sample file where this occurs?  I just knocked up a quick test like this:

So 124 words in Word with the footnotes included.  In Studio the same file opens like this (with all the footnotes extracted):

The analyse report gives me this:

The wordcount report gives me this:

The confirmation statistics gives me this:

The one word difference is probably due to the ellipsis in segment #7 which Word counts as a word and Trados Studio does not.  Other than that I think it's pretty accurate.

Two things to consider:

1. what version of Studio are you using just in case you have an old one that had a bug (can't think when, but worth checking)
2. are you sure what you think are footnotes are really footnotes?  Have they been extracted and you can see them in the editor view (segments #2, #6 and #7 in my example)?
   
   

Thank you so much, Paul, for your kind answer. I was trying to retrive the document I translated before Christmas and take pictures of the word count in both environments (Word and Studio) to support my claim, but unfortunately I was unable to. I mean, I don't remember which document gave me the same word count (maybe it was just a coincidence)... I tried with other documents, but as you said, the word count differs regardless of the footnotes. I should have taken pictures back then. Anyway, I will keep an eye on it, and if I experience a similar case in the future, I will submit another query with evidence. I have the latest version of Studio (2022), and I am glad to hear that it is more accurate than Word (in that it does not count ellipsis) and that footnotes are extracted and counted in automatically (I see them in the editor view). Thank you!  

Cristina Fumagalli 

Thank you.  In case it helps, here's a link to an article (pretty old now) that does help a bit with where the differences in wordcount can arise.

https://multifarious.filkin.com/2012/11/13/wordcount/

With some content the difference can be quite considerable, but on the whole they're normally close enough not to worry about it.

Thank you, very helpful!

Thank you, very helpful!