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Wednesday, October 4 2006
Mac Word users, heads up
Posted by Ray @ 1:49 amJust finished vomiting out a long assignment.
Checked the word count on Microsoft Word 2003 on my Windows box: 4264. Checked the word count of the exact same document on Microsoft Word 2004 on my Mac: 4271.
What, is Word for Mac more kiasu about exceeding word limits than Word for Windows? Can Mac users tout this as a “feature”?
Why is the word count algorithm different? Microsoft’s knowledge base is silent on the issue. More importantly, what exactly is giving up the difference?
Turns out they treat hyphenated words differently:
That’s not all. I couldn’t reproduce the bug reliably. Here’s the most “reliable” way I got it to appear:
1) Find a word document made on Windows, that gives a different word count when opened on a Mac.
2) Open that file on the Mac.
3) Now open a new document on the Mac, and type in any hyphenated word.
4) Check your word count.
5) Open a new word on Windows, type in the same word. Check your word count.
…Seriously. What gives?
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