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Add-ins
PractiCount Toolbar
reviewed by Geetesh Bajaj, December 14th 2004
Introduction
Many users including translators, authors, writers and transcriptionists
need to count the number of words in a document. While Microsoft
Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint do offer some
features to do the count, the end results are nowhere close to professional.
Word's WordCount toolbar is probably the most advanced word count
feature available and even that lacks features that professionals
require. PowerPoint and Excel offer no equivalent option.
So, what is the solution? One option is to use Practiline Software's
PractiCount Toolbar.
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About Practiline and PractiCount
Practiline Software is a Seattle based company that creates the
PractiCount range of applications. There are two versions of PractiCount
available:
- PractiCount and Invoice is a counting and invoicing program
for language professionals who base their quotations and invoices
on document text count.
- PractiCount Toolbar for Microsoft Office is an add-in
for Word, Excel and PowerPoint that provides one-click access
to counting options within these programs.
In this review, we will look at the PractiCount Toolbar and its
use within PowerPoint. My contact at Practiline Software for this
review was Maxim Siefer who coordinated with me and responded to
all my questions. Thank you, Maxim.
You can learn more about Practline
and their PractiCount products at their site...
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Download and Installation
The PractiCount Toolbar comes in two versions: Standard and Professional.
You can download a 15 day trial version of either product from the
Practiline site.
Installation of the product is simple and adds PractiCount toolbars
to your Word, Excel and PowerPoint interfaces. Here's a screenshot
of the toolbar inside Microsoft PowerPoint 2003.
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Using the PractiCount Toolbar
Using the PractiCount toolbar is very simple - just click the Count
Statistics icon and PractiCount presents you with a concise
report (see screenshot).
If you need a detailed report, click on the Detailed Statistics
icon and PractiCount will provide you with a full detailed report
that you can export to a Word or Excel document (see screenshot
- click screenshot
for full image).
PractiCount's reports are highly customizable - just click the
Settings icon to be presented with many options. PractiCount
also allows you to look at Word Frequency Statistics in a
presentation - just click the relevant icon in the toolbar.
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Why PractiCount?
I asked Maxim about how the PractiCount Toolbar for Office evolved
- "It did evolve out of our other software - PractiCount and
Invoice which is a stand-alone program for counting text in Microsoft
Office documents, HTML etc. People were asking us to add such a
functionality right to the Microsoft Office interface so that they
could count the document they are working with immediately. So we
did."
I also asked Maxim about typical situations for the usage of the
PractiCount toolbar in PowerPoint - "PractiCount Toolbar is
meant, in the first turn, for translators who base their bills on
the amount of text they translate. And for all other PowerPoint
users who need to know how much text exactly a PowerPoint presentation
contains. A typical use for a translator, I guess, is the following:
a translator receives a PowerPoint file for translation, counts
it with PractiCount Toolbar and gives a quote to the customer based
on the text amount (if pricing depends on the source text) or uses
the text count to estimate translation time and/or to see how much
text the file contains and where. After having translated the text,
a translator may use PractiCount Toolbar again to give a customer
the final quote (if pricing depends on the target text)."
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Pricing and Support
The standard version of PractiCount Toolbar costs US$49.95 while
the professional version costs US$79.95. You'll
find a comparison of both the versions here...
Support is through email and there is also an online FAQ at the
site.
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Conclusion
PractiCount is a simple, easy-to-use product that does not cost
too much. It's a one-trick pony but it does whatever it set out
to do exceedingly well. What's more, it works across three most
used applications of the Microsoft Office suite with equal dexterity.
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