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Count the number of words in a PDF file

Fresh7 days ago
Mar 15, 2026141812 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

How can I get the word count of a PDF file? I think that most pdf files for which I want to get total word count have text layer embedded, so I need no OCR. The task was arisen from searching for some scientific papers of known size, e.g. 15000 words. Most moders papers are published in pdf format

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Fix for: Count the number of words in a PDF file

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Quick Answer: Long Answer: If on Unix, you can use : http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl1_pdftote.htm and then do the word count in the generated file. If on Unix, you can use: to get the word count. Also, see the comment by frabjous - basically, you can do it in one step by piping to instead to a temporary file:

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