Counting Inserted and Deleted Words in Track Changes

Last updated on January 2023 (please read the comments for some helpful tips).

While pondering which topic should I write about first, along came a project, and with it an interesting challenge that I thought could turn into an article.

In some highly regulated industries such as Legal and Pharmaceuticals/Healthcare it is not uncommon to get requests for updating an existing translation where the edits in the new version of the source document are indicated by the Track Changes feature.
This type of project presents a unique challenge for quoting, scheduling and processing.

The Challenge: How to get the Track Changes statistics?

The main challenge in this type of project is to get a reliable revision statistics to base the quote and scheduling consideration on.
The first statistic that comes to mind is the word count of the insertions and deletions, however, the word count alone is usually not enough because this is not a straightforward translation project. The number of insertions and deletions can significantly affect the complexity level of the project because each edit needs to be identified in the source, its correspondent location needs to be found in the translated document (and with some documents that lack any orienting elements such as numbers, bullet lists or unique formatting this could be quite difficult), and only then the real work of translation begins. In other words, translating an insertion of 1,000 words in one continuous text segment is a lot easier than revising 1,000 individual insertions of one word, although on first look the word count of these two examples is the same.
Hence, a more detailed statistics is needed.

The Solution: The Reviewing Pane and a Macro

There are different methods to approach this challenge. Some save a copy of the file, then accept all the changes and compare the two versions to get a rough word count. If a TM of the previous translation is available it can be leveraged in a Translation Environment Tool such as OmegaT, SDL Studio, MemoQ, etc., including the very efficient way of working with DOCX files that contain Track Changes that was introduced in SDL Studio 2011 SP2, as explained in more details in an article by Paul Filkin, and I’m sure that there are more methods and tricks being used that I know nothing about.
Personally I find the first method described above too risky and inaccurate, and there isn’t always a TM available. Indeed, the existing translation could be aligned, but this is not always practical or efficient when one is only interested in preparing a quote, not to mention that not everyone is using a Translation Environment Tool to begin with.
So, assuming that there isn’t a TM available, or that it isn’t practical to use one, there is a need for a fairly reliable, quick, and hassle free method for getting the relevant statistics. For that I like to use two built in features of Word: The Reviewing Pane and a Macro.
Please note that I’m using Word 2010. The Reviewing Pane works the same in Word 2007 and 2013, but I’m not sure about Word 2003 or previous versions.

The Reviewing Pane

Word has a nice little and often overlooked feature called the Reviewing Pane, and more specifically, its Revision Summary section. This section shows the number of insertions, deletions, moves (although it is worth noting that a move is counted as one insertion and one deletion, but nevertheless it could be handy to know how much text segments were moved internally) and other edits made to the document.
To bring up the Reviewing Pane:

  1. Switch to the Review tab on the Ribbon.
  2. Click the Reviewing Pane button under the Tracking group of the Review tab.

The Review Pane is displayed on the left (or right if Word is used with a RTL interface language), with the Revision Summary section showing the number of insertions, deletions, and moves.
Revision Summary section of the Reviewing PaneThe Revision Summary section (marked by the red rectangle) of the Reviewing Pane showing the number and types of edits made

This data is important but incomplete. It is incomplete because one insertion could add one word or any number of words to the document, and therefore the revision statistics must be supplemented by the word count statistic to provide a more accurate and reliable estimation of the work involved.

The Track Changes Statistics Macro

The easiest way to get the revision word count is probably using a macro. I thought that such a macro is readily available, but I was wrong. A quick web search have produced several resources, including this great article by Emma Goldsmith in her Signs & Symptoms of Translation blog. That macro counts only the insertions word count, and although that is generally enough because the more important word count to have is the one for the insertions (for the deletions the number of instances is usually more significant), I still prefer to have a more complete set of statistics available. So, I sat down to write one, and a few hours later…I failed! it didn’t work.
Luckily, when I went back online to search for some hints as to why some of the commands aren’t working, I’ve stumbled upon the full solution in an article by Allen Wyatt of Allen Wyatt’s Word Tips.
Mr. Wyatt was kind enough to agree to share his code in this article, and I thank him for that.
The Code for for the Count Track Changes Statistics:

Sub CountTrackChanges()
Dim lInsertsWords As Long
Dim lInsertsChar As Long
Dim lDeletesWords As Long
Dim lDeletesChar As Long
Dim sTemp As String
Dim oRevision As Revision

lInsertsWords = 0
lInsertsChar = 0
lDeletesWords = 0
lDeletesChar = 0
For Each oRevision In ActiveDocument.Revisions
Select Case oRevision.Type
Case wdRevisionInsert
lInsertsChar = lInsertsChar + Len(oRevision.Range.Text)
lInsertsWords = lInsertsWords + oRevision.Range.Words.Count
Case wdRevisionDelete
lDeletesChar = lDeletesChar + Len(oRevision.Range.Text)
lDeletesWords = lDeletesWords + oRevision.Range.Words.Count
End Select
Next oRevision

sTemp = "Insertions" & vbCrLf
sTemp = sTemp & " Words: " & lInsertsWords & vbCrLf
sTemp = sTemp & " Characters: " & lInsertsChar & vbCrLf
sTemp = sTemp & "Deletions" & vbCrLf
sTemp = sTemp & " Words: " & lDeletesWords & vbCrLf
sTemp = sTemp & " Characters: " & lDeletesChar & vbCrLf
MsgBox sTemp
End Sub

Note: CountTrackChanges (in the first line of code) is the name of the macro. It could be renamed as long as the new name contains up to 80 letters or numbers (without symbols or spaces) and begins with a letter, as per Word’s macro name limitations.

When running this Macro, a small window pops up and displays the word and character counts of the insertion and deletions.

Track Changes Statistics Window
The Track Changes Statistics results window showing the word and character counts of the revisions

Final Thoughts

Figuring out how much to charge for updating an existing translation when the changes in the source are indicated by the Track Change feature is somewhat of a challenge. The word count alone doesn’t account for the time and effort required for locating the edits in the source and target document, and therefore a more complete set of statistics is needed.
When no TM is available, or when it is not practical to create or use one, I think that the method described in this article for getting the revision summary (i.e. the number of insertions, deletions, and moves that can affect the complexity level of the project) and the word count statistics is a fairly simple, quick, and reliable one.
It is always a good idea to follow-up and visually inspect the document to determine how many of the insertions are also deletions (i.e. text replacements) and what is the average segment size. Working with larger segments of text is usually easier than working with large number of edits that consist of individual words or short sentences.

61 responses to “Counting Inserted and Deleted Words in Track Changes”

  1. Laurence* Avatar
    Laurence*

    Thank you so much ! This is a very useful macro and it works perfectly (altough I had to try a couple of times but I blame it on the fact that I never created a macro before). You kind of made my day.

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Thank you Laurence for taking the time to comment.
      I’m glad that you have found the article and Macro useful. Working with documents with tracked changes is a topic that is not often discussed nor receiving the attention that I think it deserves, so I thought to share my experience and method.

    2. Cristina Avatar
      Cristina

      I am also trying to record a macro for the first time. But probably I do something wrong. When I run it I get a copy of the code and not the box with statistics. I would appreciate a lot if you can help!

      1. Shai Avatar
        Shai

        Hi Cristina,
        Open the editor (ALT+F11 or View > Macros > View Macros > Create) and paste the code from the article, replacing the ‘Sub [Name]’ and ‘Sub end’ commands in the editor windows. Just make sure that in the VBA Editor you select the Normal template from the left upper pane.
        Then you should be able to run it from your macro list (View > Macros > View Macros).

        Alternatively, download this this macro export file, and import it into the VBA Editor: ALT+F11 > Make sure the Normal template is selected on the left pane > File > Import file.

        1. Umang Dholabhai Avatar
          Umang Dholabhai

          Hi Shai,

          Very grateful for the help. Got this macro working.

          (It is never too late to realize that I was taken for a ride by an agency since years. )

          Million thanks.

          1. Shai Avatar
            Shai

            Hi Umang,

            Thank you for the kind words, and I’m glad the macro helped you.

  2. Samuel olivier Avatar
    Samuel olivier

    It’s better to include in your count all the words of a segment that have been modified, since you often need to edit the entire senrtence. Accept all deletions analyse your file and add the words in the No match and the Fuzzy match and you will get a fair esimation of the work you need to do.

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Thank you for your comment, Samuel.
      Your way is certainly another option to go about this.
      I think the macro is a very straightforward, quick, and easy way to get the statistics at a glance, especially if you are not using a translation environment tool.

  3. Lucio Avatar
    Lucio

    Hello! Many thanks for this very interesting article. I tried to install the macro, but since I have never done so before, I tried to follow the instructions you provided Cristina with with no success. Also, I tried to download the macro export file but can’t find the VBA Editor as the shortcut you indicated does not seem to work on my pc (I tried both my Italian and Spanish computers). I’d be grateful if you could help. Many thanks in advance.

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Hello Lucio and thank you for your comment.

      Following your comment I noticed a mistake in my reply to Cristina. The correct shortcut for launching the VBA editor is ALT+F11 and not Shift+F11 as I initially wrote. Sorry about that, and thank you for bringing it to my attention.

      I hope that now you will be able to run the macro, but if not, let me know.

  4. selenge Avatar
    selenge

    Hi this is very helpful article. i tried to use it on a large word file but it takes forever and the program does not respond in windows. i tried it on mac and it shows error 5852 in word 2011 for mac. is there any other solution? thank you

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Hi Selenge,

      I can’t test this on Word 2011 for MacOS, but perhaps the error message indicates that the code needs to be adapted to the the way Word for MacOS works.

      In Windows it should work, though. Did you open the file from an email or first saved it to your system? If you tried to open the file from an email and then run the macro, please try to save it first to the a local folder, and then try to run this macro again.

      Can you share the file?

      1. Martina Avatar

        Hello Shai,
        I have the exact same problem as Selenge (error 5852), except I work on a Windows environment. The string highlighted by the Debug tool is “Select Case oRevision.Type”. Any suggestions as to how to solve the problem?
        Thanks,

        Martina

        1. Shai Avatar
          Shai

          Hello Martina,

          Can you please verify in the VB editor that the code appears exactly as below (especially that the last line doesn’t repeat itself):
          [code language=”vb”]
          Sub GetTCStats()

          ‘ GetTCStats Macro


          Dim lInsertsWords As Long
          Dim lInsertsChar As Long
          Dim lDeletesWords As Long
          Dim lDeletesChar As Long
          Dim sTemp As String
          Dim oRevision As Revision
          lInsertsWords = 0
          lInsertsChar = 0
          lDeletesWords = 0
          lDeletesChar = 0
          For Each oRevision In ActiveDocument.Revisions
          Select Case oRevision.Type
          Case wdRevisionInsert
          lInsertsChar = lInsertsChar + Len(oRevision.Range.Text)
          lInsertsWords = lInsertsWords + oRevision.Range.Words.Count
          Case wdRevisionDelete
          lDeletesChar = lDeletesChar + Len(oRevision.Range.Text)
          lDeletesWords = lDeletesWords + oRevision.Range.Words.Count
          End Select
          Next oRevision
          sTemp = "Insertions" & vbCrLf
          sTemp = sTemp & " Words: " & lInsertsWords & vbCrLf
          sTemp = sTemp & " Characters: " & lInsertsChar & vbCrLf
          sTemp = sTemp & "Deletions" & vbCrLf
          sTemp = sTemp & " Words: " & lDeletesWords & vbCrLf
          sTemp = sTemp & " Characters: " & lDeletesChar & vbCrLf
          MsgBox sTemp
          End Sub
          [/code]

          What version of Word are you using?

          Can you please try to open a new empty document, add some dummy text (in Word 2007 or newer type ‘=lorem(5)’ without the quotes to quickly create 5 paragraphs of dummy text), make some edits with the Track Changes option turned on, and then try to run the macro again on this file? This is to exclude that the error is due to some issue in a specific document.

          1. Diego Achío Avatar

            Hello Shai,

            Thanks a lot for the Macro! I’m a translator and it has saved me a lot of times!

            I ran into this same error 5852 today trying to count the track changes from a 84 pages document. The document has images and tables with text in it. Some of the changes were performed into the tables, other tables were erased, and there were some images added and deleted too.

            I’ve been using the counter just fine in plain text documents, so I’m guessing this error comes from adding or deleting images or tables while using Track Changes. Does this makes sense?

            I use MS Word 2013 on Windows 8.1 and the error points out to “Select Case oRevision.Type”

            I would really appreciate it if you could help us find out what’s causing this error. I need to give a word count for track changes made to a client tomorrow and going through 84 pages is just nuts…

        2. Hamdy Kenawy Avatar
          Hamdy Kenawy

          Hi Martina,

          I would like to thank Shai very much indeed for this macro. I encountered the very same problem but when I copied the whole text and pasted it in a new document, the macro worked perfectly. It is really strange, isn’t it? but it worked!

          Thanks Shai once more

          All the best,

          Hamdy

          1. Linda Ahlblad Avatar
            Linda Ahlblad

            Hamdy Kenawy has the solution for counting changed words in multiple documents. Copy each text and paste it in a new document, the macro works perfectly.

  5. Palthupady Avatar
    Palthupady

    I regularly work with folders containing Microsoft Word documents with tracked changes.

    Could this macro be modified so that it extracts the Revision Summary (just the values/totals) of all Word documents in a particular folder into an Excel work book.

    The table should contain
    Document name:
    Summary (revisions):
    Insertions:
    Deletions:

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      This will require a different Macro.

      I’m not sure at the moment how to go about this, but a good place to start would be to ask at Allen Wyatt’s Word Tops.

      You might also want to have a look at DocTools. I’m not sure that it does all that you ask for out-of-the-box, but together with the Track Changes Statistics macro I think you would be able to make it work.

      This is an interesting use case, and I’ll have a look into this. If I will come up with something useful, I’ll update the article with the information.

      1. Palthupady Avatar
        Palthupady

        Thank you Shai

  6. Ana Avatar
    Ana

    Thank you very much for this Shai, I managed to create a Macro (importing your link). However, the counting it gives me is not accurate – it is always above the real counting. Is there a way of solving this? I work a lot with documents with track changes, and so far I have to rely on the counting made by the client – not that I have any reason to think that it is inaccurate, but I would prefer to do my own counting.
    Anyway, it was great to find this page, and I look forward to hear more from you.
    Ah, I work with an Imac OSX Yosemite…

  7. Laetitia PARIS Avatar

    Great Macro, thank you so much! Note: I used the code from Shai’s post (July 11, 2015 at 05:01) as the original one returned an error.

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Thank you for taking the time to comment, Laetitia.

  8. Shai Avatar
    Shai

    Thank you for taking the time to comment,
    Yes, I think the macro is currently a little out of date. I need to look into it again.

  9. Cristina Frasineanu Avatar
    Cristina Frasineanu

    Hello, how many changes do you estimate to implement per hour of work, please?

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Thank you for your comment Cristina.

      It is impossible to say. There isn’t any standard estimation/productivity metric because there are too many parameters involved.
      The entire idea behind counting the new and deleted segments is to minimize the guesswork. Knowing how many words there are to update and how many changes were made (fewer edits throughout the documents, i.e. continuous blocks of new or deleted text, usually mean less effort) should give a relatively reliable estimate as to the effort involved. Of course, just like any other translation work — the number of words is only a general metric for giving a rough general idea about the time and effort involved. The nature of the text, the nature of the edits, the purpose of the document, and more all factor in and could significantly affect the work.

      As a very rough estimate, after determining the word count and the general effort involved — charging around 30% more to account for all the extra effort involved in this type of update work compared to translating a similar new document seems reasonable to me. Once you know that project fee, you can break it down to hours or whatever else you want to quote by (although in my opinion working by the hour should really be an open-ended arrangement and not something quoted in advance).

  10. vfb Avatar

    Is the character count with or without spaces? Would be great if it were with spaces (i.e. a standard line / Normzeil in German)

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      The character count includes spaces.

  11. maria Avatar
    maria

    This is a truly helpful macro that we have been using for years now. However we lately have been unable to do so – we get a MW window from Word 10 with the following message “the macro cannot be found or has been disabled because of your macro security settings” We did check our settings and that should not be the problem. We also verified code in the VB editor as well. We are puzzled. Any help will be appreciated 😉

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Thank you for your comment, Maria.

      If the setting in File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings are correct (to allow all macros), I would check for add-in related issue.

      Start Word in Safe Mode. Press and hold the Control key while double clicking Word’s icon. If the macro works in Safe Mode, and add-on might be the culprit.
      Go to File > Options > Add-ins; there make sure COM Add-in is selected in the dropdown list at the bottom, click Go, and disable any Add-ins one-by-one until you find the culprit.

      If this didn’t help, I would rename the Normal.dotm template (when Word is closed), restart Word and see if it made any difference.

  12. Štefan Pecen Avatar
    Štefan Pecen

    Hi Shai,

    it works perfect, and helped me a lot.
    One question – character count is with or without spaces?…

    Best regards,
    Stefan Pecen, simulta, Bratislava

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Many thanks for your comment, Stefan.

      The character count includes spaces.

  13. Agathe Avatar
    Agathe

    I wanted to thank you so much, I could not track my progression in TC revision jobs so far, so you are a savior! First macro of my life and your explanation is more than useful. Many many thanks! 🙂

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Thank you for taking the time to comment Agathe.

      I’m glad this was helpful. The technical credit all goes to Mr. Allen Wyatt of Allen Wyatt’s Word Tips, who developed this macro.

  14. Kenneth Grima Avatar
    Kenneth Grima

    Hi Shai, many thanks indeed for sharing this macro code with us. Regards.

  15. Pablo C Avatar
    Pablo C

    Hello Shai,
    I’ve been using this macro for a couple of years, now, since I work as a Project Manager and it’s hugely useful. However, every now and then I get an error (completely random, because sometimes if I run the macro on the same document but a different PC, I’ll get no error at all). The error code is 5852 and I haven’t been able to find a solution. Any input will be much appreciated. Thanks!

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Hello Pablo,

      Thank you for taking the time to comment.
      A few others have also reported a similar behavior, and I actually noticed it myself.

      To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what might cause this but looking into it in more depth is on my to-do list, albeit not a top priority because the Revisions pane in newer versions of Word is slowly catching up to displaying this information out-of-the-box (at the time of this writing, June 2017, it only displays some of the information the macro provides), rendering this macro somewhat redundant.

      I did notice, however, a potential link between this error and documents with hyperlinks in them. Removing the hyperlinks (Ctrl+Shift+F9) might be helpful as a workaround.

      If I’ll manage to figure it out, I’ll do my best to notify everyone who reported this issue.

      1. Pablo C Avatar
        Pablo C

        I finally found it! Took me long enough, but I’m posting this for everyone running into error 5852. Apparently Word doesn’t like it when you change styles or something else in the format of the document and you run into this error. If you accept (or reject — it shouldn’t really make a difference) all formatting changes and then re-run the macro, it works like a charm. At least it worked for me in a compared document that was giving me problems.

        1. Shai Avatar
          Shai

          Thank you very much for this tip, Pablo.

  16. Costantino Sbacchi Avatar
    Costantino Sbacchi

    Hello Shai, just a quick comment. I have noticed the statistics are usually a bit higher than the real number of words that Word or Studio would normally count. Is there a reason why the macro is doing this? Thank you!

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Hello Costantino. I haven’t noticed it myself, but a few others reported similar observations.
      I don’t think there is something technically wrong with the macro and the differences are probably due to a slight difference in what Word considers a word and what is considered an edited word. That said, the difference shouldn’t be significant and I would standardize the count based on the macro statistics.

      Word and Studio count words differently and this explains that discrepancy.

      1. Alexey Avatar
        Alexey

        Thank you for this macro — it’s a great help. However, after some research and a lot of manual counting, I found out that it counts every punctuation mark (each period, comma, colon, semicolon, quotation mark, parenthesis, bracket, dash, hyphen etc., etc.) as a separate word. A hyphenated word, such as “non-controllable” or “sub-contract” etc. (a single word according to Word statistics) would be counted as three separate words.The difference in word count between the macro and the Word statistics can be very significant.

        E. g. a fairly standard sentence from a contract, like the one below (42 words according to Word statistics) is counted by the macro as 51 words. That’s a 21% error in a single sentence.

        Example sentence:
        After the due diligence period, the GMP will be adjusted during the Term only through the change control procedure to reflect (i) agreed changes (including those due to the following conditions) and (ii) the impact of inflation, in accordance with Section 4:

        1. Shai Avatar
          Shai

          Thank you for your comment, Alexey.
          I also noticed that the Marco could behave strangely on newer versions of Word (it was originally tested in Office 2010) and produce inconsistent results. For some it works better than for others. I didn’t have the time to investigate this further, but I hope to get around to it at the not so distant future.
          I hope this is all due to some changes in the way VBA works in newer versions of Word. I have some serious catching up to do with VBA in newer versions of Office, and to be honest with you—this is not a priority at the moment.
          I might seek the help of VBA experts, though.

          1. Alexey Avatar
            Alexey

            Thanks for your response, Shai. Just to clarify, the macro is still usable: eliminating all punctuation in a text (takes a couple of minutes with the global search and replace) doesn’t change the Word’s word count and brings the error margin of the macro down to only about 2%, which is more than acceptable.

  17. Septiola Consulting Avatar

    Thank you so much ! This is a very useful macro and it works perfectly (although I had to try a couple of times but I blame it on the fact that I never created a macro before).

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Thank you for taking the time to comment. Word macros could be a little quirky at times. I’m glad you managed to get it to work eventually, and that the macro wast helpful.

  18. Linda DeVore Avatar

    Hi Shai, I don’t know if you’re still interested in this post nearly a year later, but I just found it and get the same error in the same line of code:
    Select Case oRevision.Type
    I tried using the macro on another file using lorem ipsum text and got the same error. I tried copying and pasting my text into a clean file (as someone else above did, with success) and got the same error. I tried removing any links, to no avail.
    If you have any suggestions, I’d love them. I really need to count the words in my Comments, if that’s possible, but barring that, this macro would work for me, to come close to determining how much effort I’m putting into my edits. A final word count just doesn’t cut it. Thanks so much for any help.

  19. Nadia Said Avatar
    Nadia Said

    Hello Shai,

    Thank you very much for the useful info. I got a document from a client with tracked changes and he asked me for a quote. Do you have any idea on which basis I should set my quote after running this macro?

    Thank you in advance.

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Hello Nadia,
      Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment.

      To answer your question: as with virtually everything related to pricing a translation service, there are quite a few parameters involved and there is not one-price-fits-all.
      The number of inserted, deleted (or moved) words is just a baseline indication for estimating the time and effort involved in updating a previously translated document.
      On top of making the actual edits, you need to take into account several other factors, such as:

      • The time it will take you to identify the palaces where you need to make the edits. For example, updating a single paragraph containtng ~100 words is easier than updating 10 separate 10-word sentences scattered all over the document;
      • Were you the one who translated the previous version? If not, or if you were but enough time has passed since, you need to account for the time you’ll need to get familiar or re-familiar with the previous translation so you could ensure consistency to avoid the document from gradually starting to look like a discombobulated patchwork;
      • How much formatting and layout work is involved in updating the document; and so on

      One way to approach this is to charge by the hour. After you’ve figured out how much time the update is likely to take, quote this as an estimate so the client would have an idea about the budget. However, when working based on your hourly rate it is vital to bill the actual time you’ve spent working and not cap the number of hours based on your initial estiamte. The baseline estimate cannot be the quote, it is just a guideline for budgeting and scheduling purposes. Despite best of efforts, it’s often difficult to accurately asses the entire time and effort involved in updating a previous version of a document, and one might run into unexpected issues while diving deeper into document.

      Putting a time limit on the number of hours this will take you is akin to charging a certain amount for the entire project, which is actually my preferred billing method. The per-hour billing scheme might work better when you are not yet experienced enough with this type of work and/or with clients who are used to be billed by contractors/outside consultants per hour, but some clients would like to know in advance how much they would have to pay. Again, pricing such a job involves several parameters and this is one of them.
      Therefore, an alternative would be to estimate how much time the work would take you, round it up reasonably to account for the practically inevitable little unforeseen complications you’ll run into, and quote that amount as the project fee.

      I believe that these are the two most reliable approaches for pricing this type of work in a way that is fair for both sides.

  20. Jessica Houdart Avatar

    I really appreciate this macro. As an editor, this helps me estimate how long an edit will take me when a former client comes back with “a few more changes for you to check.”

    I’m curious, though, why it seems to add one extra word every time it counts additions or deletions. The extra words pile up since it counts an extra word for each altered phrase. Any hints on how to get around this?

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Thank you for your kind words, Jessica.
      At this point (2019) the macro is a little bit flaky, at least with newer version of Word. I’m not entirely sure why, to be honest. Must be something in the code itself that needs some updating/revision but I don’t find time to get around to it.
      If I would, I’ll update this post and do my best to notify everyone who has commented by e-mail.

      1. Brian Avatar
        Brian

        Dear Shai,

        If you ever happened to have the opportunity to have such update on the macro, please kindly add me into the update email list as well.

        Much appreciated,
        Brian

        1. Shai Avatar
          Shai

          I will, Brain.
          Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment.

  21. Sjoe! Avatar

    A bit too complicated, by me.
    A program package named WorkShare has an inclusion, DeltaView, which compares the source and target versions and produces results in various formats, incl. Word doc, in coloured fonts. You save it in the Word doc format and delete first black(unchanged text) + red stricken-out (deleted) + green (moved), leaving blue double underscored, which gives you insertions/added text only. Count it (Statistics) and write down. Then roll back (or go back) to the saved DeltaView compared text and delete black(unchanged text) + blue double underscored (added) + green (moved), leaving red stricken-out (deleted text). Count it. Do the same with the moved (green) text, if needed.
    For all I know, DeltaView can be purchased (or plain found downloaded) as a standalone program.

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Thank you for your comment, Sjoe!
      If I understand correctly, you can basically do the same thing using Word albeit perhaps not as conveniently.
      The idea behind this post was to describe how one can use the tools available in Word to quickly get the Track Changes statistics without having to resort to a multi-step process or rely on a third-party program.
      But this gives me an idea. I might research other tools/methods to get Track Changes statistics and expand the the scope of this article to include additional methods.

  22. Firoz Hasolkar Avatar
    Firoz Hasolkar

    Hello Shai,
    I really appreciate this macro, i was looking for such macro for 1 of my project. Just 1 change required if you can do this for me then it will be very helpful for me.

    the case is: I want if there is deletion and insertion it should count as 1
    for example: My name is Firoz(deleted)Faiz(added) <- this should count as 1 change.

    I hope you got what i want, do let me know.

    Thanks
    Firoz H

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Hello Firoz,
      I get what you mean but I don’t think it’s possible in Word because deletions and insertions are counted separately. There is no way of telling if a deletion and an insertion are cancelling each other or not.
      The best way to go about what you want is probably to accept all the edits and then compare the word count of the edited version to that of the original version. The difference should give you a rough idea how many words have been added or removed from the document all together.

  23. 1000krokow.eu Avatar

    Hello Shai,

    thank you for your valuable tips on this macra. It works perfect for me, although I’d like to know is there any way of changing its code to also show insertions / deletions without spaces value?

    I’d appreciate your reply!

    1. Shai Avatar
      Shai

      Hello,
      There is likely a way to adjust the macro to do this but I currently don’t have time to look into and experiment with it to make sure the count is at least reasonably accurate.
      Having said that, maybe have a look at PractiCount or a similar tool? For the very least the developers might be willing to consider adding that function if it doesn’t exist already.

  24. arifkhan Avatar

    Thank you for your valuable tips on this article. It works perfectly for me, although I’d like to know is there information is correct. It’s very helpful for me and I will share this content my social media friends. And check my own word counter online free tool, you can get help from here.

  25. Artemis Avatar
    Artemis

    Just wanted to say thanks.

    In Word (2020), under Review and Show Markup, click the drop down and only select Formatting. Then under the Accept dropdown, select All Changes Shown. This (should) removes all formatting changes.

    Then you run it and voila. Used this on a 17K word assignment. Really turned around my night.

    Thanks!

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