Hi, I am writing my final Master thesis and by school regulation I need to
include the total number of characters (including spaces) in the front page
of my work.

Of course the cover page and bibliography are excluded from the count,
therefore I created 3 sections in my Word document (first pages with cover,
main part to be counted, and bibliography).

I would like to insert a field in the front page, which automatically counts
the characters (including spaces) of only 1 section of the doc.

I already know (by previously asking in this forum) how to create a field,
which counts also spaces ( {DOCPROPERTY CharactersWithSpaces} ), but how do
I restrain the count to only a section? Furthermore placing the field in a
different section?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Best, Christian

PS (if you have the chance, after posting your answer, email it also to me
at iachris (at) freemail (dot) it - Thank you)

It would be handy, wouldn't it, if this field would accept a \b (bookmark)
switch? Unfortunately, that simple solution doesn't work. I suspect that you
may have to use this bookmark approach combined with VBA to count the
characters in the bookmarked section (or the section identified in some
other way) and place the result in the document. You might also ask the
thesis czars what their intent was in creating a requirement that is so
difficult to meet.

If push comes to shove, when editing is complete, use Tools | Word Count to
find the number of characters (without spaces) in the entire document, then
select, in turn, each portion to be omitted, get a character count on that,
and subtract the results from the total. Type the result into the thesis as
hard text.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
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"Christian" wrote in message
...
Hi, I am writing my final Master thesis and by school regulation I need to
include the total number of characters (including spaces) in the front
page
of my work.

Of course the cover page and bibliography are excluded from the count,
therefore I created 3 sections in my Word document (first pages with
cover,
main part to be counted, and bibliography).

I would like to insert a field in the front page, which automatically
counts
the characters (including spaces) of only 1 section of the doc.

I already know (by previously asking in this forum) how to create a field,
which counts also spaces ( {DOCPROPERTY CharactersWithSpaces} ), but how
do
I restrain the count to only a section? Furthermore placing the field in a
different section?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Best, Christian

PS (if you have the chance, after posting your answer, email it also to me
at iachris (at) freemail (dot) it - Thank you)