Adding a Word Count Column to Your Windows Folders

The following procedure will help you add a word count column to your Windows File Explorer view, which can come in handy for translators and other professionals.

In Windows File Explorer, select the View tab, and then Details.

There are 4 default columns shown in the Details view: Name, Date modified, Type and Size. We will now add a Word Count column.

Right-click anywhere on the column name bar. Then, in the menu that opens up, click More. 

This will open an alphabetical list of columns that you can add to your view. Scroll all the way to the bottom and check the box next to word count. Click OK to close the Choose Details window.

And that's it! Now you'll see the word count for each file in its own column.

As you can see in the screenshot, this works for Word and Powerpoint files. Unfortunately, though, it doesn't work for other common types of files, such as Excel or PDF.

A word of caution: Windows File Explorer takes the word count from the document properties, so there may be a discrepancy between that number and the word count shown by the program where the document was created. Because of this, it would be advisable to consider these word counts estimates only and rely on dedicated programs such as PractiCount or AnyCount for more accurate counting.

As a final note, to make this feature available in other folders*, click the Options button in the ribbon and select Change folder and search options.

Then, in the View tab, select Apply to Folders.

*Special thanks to Iwan Davies for pointing this out.

Adding Spellchecking Languages to Trados Studio

There may be cases where Trados Studio's spellchecking option appears greyed out with a "Language Not Supported" legend. For example, this is what happens if I have a project that has Venezuelan Spanish as the target language.

Luckily, there is an easy solution to this.

1. Go to the App Store and download the Hunspell Dictionary Manager. In this example, I'm using the integrated app store from within Trados Studio 2021.

2. After installing the app and restarting Trados Studio, go to the Welcome view and launch the app.

3. Under "Select appropriate dictionary language", select a base language, that is, a language variant that is in the list and that could be used as the basis to build your new dictionary. In my example, Venezuelan Spanish is not supported, but there are a number of Spanish variants that are in the list, several of which I've added before via this procedure. I will select Mexican Spanish as my base dictionary in this example.

4. Under "Select new dictionary language", select the unsupported language that you need to create a dictionary for. In my example, this will be Venezuelan Spanish.

5. Click Create. You will see a message appear saying that the dictionary has been successfully created. What this means is that a copy of the Mexican Spanish dictionary has been created and labeled Venezuelan Spanish.

6. Close the Hunspell Dictionary Manager app and restart Trados Studio. 

7. Now, the last step is to make sure that you've chosen Hunspell as your spellchecker. To do this, go to Options - Editor - Spelling.

Now your new language variant dictionary is enabled and your previously unsupported language is supported!