Word count question

I can see the whole-document total word count for my OmniOutliner document along the bottom edge of the window, but is there any way to see the word count of a selected subsection of the outline please?

That would be a useful feature but I don’t think you can. When I really need this, I copy the section to a new doc and then trash that once I’ve seen the number. Clumsy and awkward but it works for this specific scenario. Just being able to count sub-rows would even be helpful.

As I variation on this, I tried creating a numerical column to track the word count of each part of the outline, but I can’t find a function that will count the words in each section. This feature would be extremely helpful for writing op-eds or other word-limited pieces.

Assuming that you have the Pro edition, you could use applescript to give you a quick count of the words of a section. Depending upon your specific needs, you could probably do so for each section. It wouldn’t update automatically but if you saved the script as an app and dumped in on the dock while you’re writing, then you could get a word count with a single click.

This would get the count of words (as applescript deems them, which isn’t exactly the same as OO) for all the rows in same section as the selected row (or first if more than one is selected):

tell application "OmniOutliner"
	set d1 to document 1
	set selRow to item 1 of selected row of d1
	
	set rr2 to rows of parent of selRow	
	-- expandAll rr2	-- might be optional
	
	set wc to 0
	repeat with a from 1 to count of rr2
		set wc to wc + (count of words of topic of item a of rr2)
	end repeat
	
	display notification wc as text
	
end tell

It could also be tweaked to assume that the selected row was the section and count everything under it (i.e. children rather than siblings).

Yes, you can use View > Focus (keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-F) to focus your window on your current selection, at which point everything else disappears (until you Unfocus). While focused, the window’s word count will reflect that focused content.

Thanks, Ken! That will work for the time being. I will also email support with a feature request… I think an op-ed or writing template that has a word count column that counts each section (with the option to auto summing children into the parent section) would be very helpful in creating op-eds or even longer pieces. Just a thought!

This is a good workaround… I will play with this and see if I can get it to do what I’m thinking.

Hope you can get it where you need it. And there’s Ken’s tip as well, which is an easier solution. I had forgotten about this post until seeing it this morning with my icon in it. At the time, I didn’t know how to make such a script work but at some point I wanted to have sections collapse excepting the one I was working on and managed to figure it out.