Hi Graeme,

What version of Word are you doing (from help=about)

If you create a new Word document and add a 1 cell table then
paste from a web page into that cell do you get this result?

If you go to http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/generator3
and generate 10 paragraphs of "Standard Lipsum"
and paste into the table cell as unformatted text do you
get the same disparity with the two methods you're using
to check?

If not, do you have an URL where you select text that
shows the large differences?

Are you pasting using Edit=Paste special and using the
plain Unformatted Text setting?

========
"Grey Dingo" wrote in message ...
Bob and Jean-Guy,
I paste text from other Word documents, Web sites, or PDFs into a cell of a
Word table, using Paste Special/Unformatted Text. I select the entire area of
the cell by finding the small black arrow just inside the left border of the
cell, then select it. I then click Tools/Word Count.

In a document I am working on, for example, the Word Count is 1,178, there
are 6,996 characters with no spaces, 8,103 characters with spaces, 71
paragraphs, and 183 lines. Using the Word Count toolbar gives the same number
of Words.

If I then select the text, by dragging over it, the Word Count is 1047
words, 6,217 chars no spaces, 7,244 chars with spaces, 19 paras, and 100
lines. The End-of-Cell Marker is not selected, but clearly the difference is
more than 1.

I write synopses of many documents, in Word Table template, reducing
documents to an exact number of Words. It is simple more convenient to select
the whole cell for my frequent checks on number of Words.

Thank you for your interest .
Remerciement.

Graeme Roberts aka Grey Dingo
--
Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*