Hi all,
I am a Dutch, professional literary writer and I created a macro that helps me to count the words and pages of the book I am currently writing. For various reasons I chose not to use the regular built-in word counting tool for this goal. I use Windows XP, Word 2003 and VB 6.3. I wrote a macro, in which I would like the words and pages to be displayed with a (European) thousands separator in a Message Box. Now it will read in my Message Box: Words: 13456 or 123456 and I want it to read 13.456 or 123.456. 
My regional settings are Dutch. The normal built-in word counting option in the Tools menu of Word 2003 does work well: it uses the regular European thousands separator and will read 13.456 for 13456 or 123.456 for 123456, but my message box numbers won't. Is there a way to change this behaviour? I tried the FontNumbers option, but without success. 
Here is my macro (I changed Dutch into English or 'My Text'):
Sub CountWords()
MsgBox "Pages:  " & Selection.Information(wdNumberOfPagesInDocument) & vbCrLf _
& "Words: " & ActiveDocument.Range.ComputeStatistics(wdStatisticWords) _
& vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "My Text", vbOKOnly, "My Text"
End Sub
 
Thanks in advance, 
Alfred
PS I am not an expert in programming at all, so I would prefer to just get some lines of code I could add to the above macro that will force the counted pages and words to use a thousands separator

Hi Alfred,
select all of the doc and try either of below:
MsgBox Selection.Words.Count
MsgBox Selection.Range.ComputeStatistics(wdStatisticWords)

The second comes closer to what you want, though it is regrettable that Word uses different methods for word count.
Alternativelly you can use below macro:
Sub countWords()
   Dim nWords As Long
   Dim rDcm As Range
   Dim oWrd As Range
   Set rDcm = ActiveDocument.Range
   For Each oWrd In rDcm.Words
       If Len(oWrd) > 0 Then
         nWords = nWords + 1
      End If
    Next
MsgBox "Total word count= " & nWords
End Sub
You can also see http://web.ticino.com/multilingual/word_character_count_tips.htm for getting various macros for word count with explaination how to run it and use it.
-Jack

Hallo Jack,
 
Thanks very much for your fast answer. In my macro I did use already the ComputeStatistics (wdStatisticWords) method and it does count the words correctly. It does not use a thousands separator, however, as the regular words counting option in the Word 2003 Tools menu does. So the word count that is displayed in my Message Box reads 123456 instead of 123.456 which is how I want the numbers to be displayed. Your CountWords macro does not display a thousands separator either.
Alfred

Ohhh...Ok use below code it does it: You will need to user Format function thats it :-)
Sub countWords()
   Dim nWords As Long
   Dim rDcm As Range
   Dim oWrd As Range
   Set rDcm = ActiveDocument.Range
   For Each oWrd In rDcm.Words
       If Len(oWrd) > 0 Then
         nWords = nWords + 1
      End If
    Next
MsgBox "Total word count= " & Format(nWords,"#,##0.0")
End Sub
 
Details of functions that you can use:

For example: a = 12345000

 Format(a,"#,##0.0") --> 12,345,000.0
 Format(a,"#,###") --->12,345,000

value = 1234567890
value.ToString("#,#", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture))  --> 1,234,567,890      
value.ToString("#,#",CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("el-GR")))  --> 1.234.567.890
Jack

Example
      
This example shows various uses of the Format function to format 
        values using both String formats and user-defined formats. For 
        the date separator (/), time separator (:), and the AM/PM 
        indicators (t and tt), the actual formatted output displayed 
        by your system depends on the locale settings the code is using. When 
        times and dates are displayed in the development environment, the short 
        time format and short date format of the code locale are used.
      
Dim MyDateTime As Date = #1/27/2001 5:04:23 PM#
Dim MyStr As String
' Returns current system time in the system-defined long time format.
MyStr = Format(Now(), "Long Time")
' Returns current system date in the system-defined long date format.
MyStr = Format(Now(), "Long Date")
' Also returns current system date in the system-defined long date 
' format, using the single letter code for the format.
MyStr = Format(Now(), "D")
' Returns the value of MyDateTime in user-defined date/time formats.
MyStr = Format(MyDateTime, "h:m:s")   ' Returns "5:4:23".
MyStr = Format(MyDateTime, "hh:mm:ss tt")   ' Returns "05:04:23 PM".
MyStr = Format(MyDateTime, "dddd, MMM d yyyy")   ' Returns "Saturday,
   ' Jan 27 2001".
MyStr = Format(MyDateTime, "HH:mm:ss")   ' Returns "17:04:23"

MyStr = Format(23)   ' Returns "23".
' User-defined numeric formats.
MyStr = Format(5459.4, "##,##0.00")   ' Returns "5,459.40".
MyStr = Format(334.9, "###0.00")   ' Returns "334.90".
MyStr = Format(5, "0.00%")   ' Returns "500.00%".

MyStr = Format(23.99, "$##,##0.00")   ' Returns "$23.00".


more info available on 
http://www.seattlecentral.edu/~ymoh/mic110vb/function_list.htm

Hi Jack,
 
Thanks for your answer. Since the CountWords macro also counts paragraphs and punctuation as words, I kept on using the WordStatistic method, because it only counts real words. Using the principle of your format code, I managed to have it work exactly as desired. Thank you so much!!
I feel free to ask you one more – very last! – question. After having lost a day’s work when shutting down Word in a regular way, but without saving my work, I installed – to prevent this ever happening again - the following macro that I found on the internet:
 
Sub AutoOpen()
            WordSaver
End Sub
 
Sub WordSaver()
            Application.OnTime When:=Now + _
            TimeValue("00:10:00"), _
            Name:="Saver"
End Sub
 
Sub Saver()
            ActiveDocument.Save
WordSaver
End Sub
 
I attached this macro to the specific document that I am working on, which is called Boek (Book). This macro gives an error, however, when the active document does not have focus. Is there a way to make this macro work, whenever the document called ‘Boek’ is open, even when it does not have focus? 
 
Thanks!
Alfred
 

Hallo Adarsh! I just managed to solve my problem, but I will keep your information for future use. Thanks!