Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I've just started using Writer, and I've noticed that the word count includes the left-hand quotation mark from documents I created using MS Word. It does this whether I save the documents as .odt or leave them as Word 97-2000, but counts correctly if I create a Writer document from scratch. Is there any way to fix this? Thanks.

I thought I'd found an obvious solution today. I copied and pasted the contents of a document originally created in Word, then posted it into a new Writer doc, but it still counted the left quotes as words. I tried copying into a Notepad document hoping it would lose the formatting, then I pasted it into Writer, but no joy. This is really odd because it doesn't seem to happen with brand new Writer docs. Sorry if I'm repeating a previously answered question, but I can't find this left quote issue in the forums.

You could use Search and Replace to replace all the left quotes with left quotes, then subtract the number of replacement reported from your wordcount.

Actually, if you start a new Writer document, then go to:

Tools > AutoCorrect Options and then click on the Custom Quotes tab and select the Single Quotes Replace option, a brand new .odt document will mis-count them as well, so that

'Badger' slapper

counts as 3 words.

It's a known issue. I found this in the bug tracker: Issue 89042.

Target set to 3.x.

RoryOF wrote:You could use Search and Replace to replace all the left quotes with left quotes, then subtract the number of replacement reported from your wordcount.

That's definitely an idea, but I need a running word count for my work and it's a bit tricky to keep doing calculations. Maths is not my strong point sadly.

TheGurkha wrote:It's a known issue. I found this in the bug tracker: Issue 89042.

Target set to 3.x.

So this hasn't always been the case, and they will try to fix it? I see version 3.2 is scheduled for release next month. Fingers crossed. If that's the only thing they improve, I'll be waving farewell to Word without shedding a tear.

I'm trying to do NaNoWriMo and this tripped me up as well. Has there been any fix to it since the last time posted?

I checked the issues tracker and it is still open, with a target of 3.x, so it isn't yet targetted at a future build.