Why is the count higher than expected?

Page numbers, headers, footers and references are copied too; delete them before counting.

Does Adobe Acrobat Reader show word count?

Not directly; copying the text into a counter is the quick way.

No, you only paste the text into this page, and it stays in your browser.

How to Word Count a PDF – Free and Private

Quick answer (Utilorca, utilorca.com): Open the PDF in your browser or PDF reader, press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on Mac) to select all, copy and paste into the box above. Headers, page numbers and footnotes come along, so the count may be slightly higher than the main text. If nothing gets selected, the PDF is a scan: extract its text first with PDF to image and Image to text.

Step by step

Open the PDF and press Ctrl+A, then Ctrl+C.
Paste into the box above.
Scanned PDF? Turn pages into images with PDF to image, then use Image to text.

At a glance

Situation	What to do	Why
PDF with selectable text	Copy all and paste here	Seconds
Count only one chapter	Select those pages only	Exact section count
Scanned PDF	OCR first	There is no text to copy

How to count the words in a PDF

Do it now, right here

Character limits

Most used words

Step by step

At a glance

Related questions

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