Wordcount Keeps Disappearing in Pages - Issue Not Fixed But Workaround Found

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Level 5

5,317 points

Wordcount Keeps Disappearing in Pages - Issue Not Fixed But Workaround Found

Several months ago I posted the following:

I'm writing a novel in Pages and the word count keeps disappearing. I need to keep closing and reopening my document to get it back (the View menu displays the "word count" as visible even when it's not showing).

The document is 350 pages long and 145k words. This only happens on the Mac version, not on the IOS versions. It was fine until I hit 200 pages. Separating the document into shorter sections is not feasible. I have no crazy formatting or images. Just text with the occasional italic or bold font.

Anyone have a similar problem or know why this is happening?

@VikingOSX tried to assist by recreating a long document, hoping it would exhibit similar issues, but they were unable to replicate the problem. Fortunately for me, I had a weird bobble with my document's TOC when I was working on my laptop and I needed to toggle the "View Document Only" option sidebar, turning off both the view wordcount and the table of contents. When I turned the wordcount back on, my disappearing wordcount problem disappeared.

For several months.

It returned when I needed to do some work on my laptop (once again, that weird bobble with the TOC), but this time, the wordcount still disappears every once and a while.

But I no longer need to restart Pages to get my wordcount back. All I need to do is select "View Document Only" in the sidebar options and it reappears. It seems to be an issue with the Wordcount display and the Table of Contents display and a replication through iCloud (the last is something I'm connecting because the problem first fixed when I needed to work on my MacBook and then started again a few months later, the next time I opened the document on my MacBook).

Mac Studio (2022)

Posted on Nov 26, 2024 10:53 AM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,088 points

Nov 27, 2024 06:35 AM in response to Lita Kaufman

Could it be that you are unconsciously typing shift+cmd+W (toggle word count) instead of cmd+W (close document)? If this is the case, the next time you open that same document, the word count will not be shown. It would be shown for a different Pages document though where word count was active before it was closed normally.

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Answer 2

Lita Kaufman Author

Level 5

5,317 points

Nov 27, 2024 08:42 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks, but nope. I'm not closing the document. I leave it open all the time, this is my personal workstation in my home office. The word count bubble simply disappears after a while, after no specific time. Whether the Mac has gone to sleep or I'm still working on it.

And it's not a case where shift+command+w brings back the word count bubble - that had been my original issue. I had to close the document to get the word count bubble back.

I wouldn't bother to open a question on the forums if I could fix the problem as simply as that (I'm not a newb, I've been using the Mac platform since 1985 and Pages in ever iteration since it was first launched in '05).

I really do appreciate your assistance and your persistence in trying to solve this annoying problem. My suspicion is that there is a problem with the document, it's old and it's large and it's complex in formatting (styles and TOC) and that it's just giving the application heartburn. I just wanted to post that I found a solid work-around to an annoying problem that might affect just a handful of other users.

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,088 points

Nov 27, 2024 09:22 AM in response to Lita Kaufman

Ok. My behavior is that I open, work on a Pages document, and then close it and quit Pages. I do not leave the document open in Pages for an extended period, and I power off my Mac each evening before sleep and power it on first thing in the morning… even before coffee.

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