How can I use the library to get the word count of a .doc/.docx files as reported in MS-Word ?

[kunalsawhney]

I am building a solution where I want the word count of the document. One way is to traverse over all the text of document and then calculate the word count.

I am wondering if there is any better way to get the word count of the document ?

Note: I want the word count to be accurate (same as reported by MS-Word)

[scanny]

I believe that's recorded in the Dublin Core metadata, isn't it? Or perhaps one of the other properties collections.

It would not be perfectly reliable because you're counting on the client that did the most recent edit to have updated it. You can probably count on Word and probably LibreOffice as well, but it's a bit of a risk you might want to consider.

Could be more accurate though, especially if there are open revisions and python-docx ignores those.