Count Occurrences
Three ways to count occurrences of words, phrases, or numbers in your documents
Conversation on sci.med.transcription recently focused on why a portion of a WP51 document might disappear. While exploring the hows and whys of this, the discussion got around to methods of checking a document to ensure that a certain number of reports existed in it. Rae Morrill volunteered that she uses a macro to count how many times specific text appears in a document--text, such as her initials, that directly correspond to the number of reports.
Rae sent along the macro with some information on its pedigree. The macro, overuse.wpm, apparently originated on a WP magazine disk. The macro code carries no copyright, and I believe it can be freely distributed. I've put out some feelers to confirm this, and, if I discover it's not in the public domain, I'll remove it from the zip. In the meantime, the macro is available here to download.
Now, on to what it does. I think, given its name and function, that this macro was originally intended as a way of determining if you had overused a word or phrase in a document. So, for example, if you finished a book review and thought that perhaps you had used "sophomoric" too many times, you could run the macro to be sure. Rae's use of this macro (verifying that if she transcribed 50 reports, 50 reports were in her file) is a really elegant, simple solution.
Of course, being one who can never let well enough alone(!), I've taken this elegant solution and added some features to it. So, the macros presented here include the original and two variations:
- overuse.wpm - counts occurrences of words, phrases, or numbers in your document
- countwm.wpm - same concept, but this one "remembers" the last ten items you counted (since starting WP51) and lets you choose from that list or enter a new item to count
- countwl.wpm - same concept, but this one has a standard pick list of items to count or you can enter a new item (you edit the macro to establish the pick list)
What else can you do with these macros? You might use the count with list macro (countwl.wpm) to count flags or blanks in a document. I'm sure, at any rate, that there are many imaginative uses for these macros.