Hi, as per the title, I'm halfway though my first novel and I would like to automate the process of tracking my cumulative word count.

I have a manual spreadsheet that works for me, but ideally I would like the data to fly from Word straight into Excel as follows:

1. Enter shortened title into Column A (usually the first line of a chapter or section)
2. Enter the word count of that file into Column C

The total will be calculated by the formula sum(c:c).

I'm using Office Starter, so perhaps I need a third party work-around, I don't know. Appreciate some pointing in the right direction.

I should add, in case it's unclear, I'm referring to the word-counts of individual files. I can't seem to make Windows 7 list the word-counts in Windows Explorer, even though there is a Details column for this purpose. So I'd like Excel to peak inside the document file, read the word-count and the title and add them to the spreadsheet as described above.

On Sat, 6 Jul 2013 11:25:27 +0100, FretLess wrote:
Hi, as per the title, I'm halfway though my first novel and I would like
to automate the process of tracking my cumulative word count.

I would imagine it can be done via some sort of VBA. I've never
written a macro in Word, so I have no idea how hard it may be to use
a macro in Word to update an Excel workbook.

If it's not obvious, when you get into it, how to do that, you might
take a hybrid approach of writing from Word to a text file or a CSV
file, and then have an auto-open macro in your Excel workbook that
reads that file and updates the workbook.

I'm using Office Starter, so perhaps I need a third party work-around, I
don't know. Appreciate some pointing in the right direction.

Hmm ... I don't know whether VBA is even available in that version.
It may not be, in which case you can't automate anything.



--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...