Word Count for a Section

Thank you all for this macro and the updates. I really appreciate this as I'm tracking word counts in the chapters of my PhD thesis and it works perfectly.
I have a table in the document with bookmarks to each of the chapter sections and I'd like to add a "Total" bookmark that shows the sum of all the chapters' word counts. Is this possible? For example, it would show the sum of the wordcounts for chapters 1 to 8?

Sub InsertWordCount()
Dim oRange As Word.Range
Dim sBookmarkName As String
Dim sTemp As String

sBookmarkName = "WordCount"
With ActiveDocument
sTemp = Format(.Sections(2).Range.ComputeStatistics(wdStatisticWords), "0")
Set oRange = .Bookmarks(sBookmarkName).Range
oRange.Delete
oRange.InsertAfter Text:=sTemp
.Bookmarks.Add Name:=sBookmarkName, Range:=oRange
End With
End Sub

This old 2007 Knowledge Base article seems still germane: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/291447/word-count-appears-inaccurate-when-you-use-the-vba-words-property. I used your tip, the KB article, and document variables to get what I needed. Thanks.

The following macros will count the number of words in each section. The count will exclude single special characters but will add a word count where there is more than one special character such as ###. If you compare with Word's word count you will see a significant difference.

Sub SectionWordCount()
Dim j As Long
Dim s As String
s = ""
For j = 1 To ActiveDocument.Sections.Count
s = s & CntWordsInRange(ActiveDocument.Sections(j).Range) & " in Section" & Str(j) & vbCrLf
Next j
MsgBox CntWordsInRange(ActiveDocument.Range) & " words in body of document" & vbCrLf & s
End Sub

Function CntWordsInRange(r As Range) As Long
Dim j As Long
Dim i As Long
i = 0
For j = 1 To r.Words.Count
Select Case Trim(r.Words(j))
Case Chr(1) To Chr(47), Chr(58) To Chr(96), Chr(123) To Chr(127)
Case Else
i = i + 1
End Select
Next j
CntWordsInRange = i
End Function

Has anyone solved the over count issue? I would really like for this macro to work.
thanks

how do you stop the code from counting blan spaces

The problem with the second macro is that the Count property of the Words object includes punctuation marks and paragraph marks as separate words.
You can get rid of the paragraph marks by using "sTemp = Format(.Sections(2).Range.Words.Count - .Sections(2).Range.Paragraphs.Count, "0")" But getting rid of the punctuation would be more difficult.

Great tip, but can anyone please advise on what field should be used in the first macro to include footnotes.

Ameet, I misread your mail. Your approach does indeed fix the problem. Thanks!

Matt, I have the same problem. It appears as though the Count method counts punctuation characters as words.
Does anyone have any tips how to handle this?

Hi Matthew,
Try changing the field to:
sTemp=Format(.Sections(2).Range.ComputeStatistics( wdStatisticWords), "0")

This macro is neat, but the counts are quite inaccurate for the document I tried it on, in Word for Mac 2011. The toolbar shows a total word count of 2850, but ActiveDocument.Range.Words.Count gives 4051. The per-section counts are also about 25% over. I don't know why! I tried converting field codes to plain text, made no difference.