Admittedly, I'm working on a PC, but the word count I see on the status bar and in the word count stats dialogue are the same - and match what I get via a NUMWORDS field.

I do note, though, that the stats dialogue on the Mac doesn't give you the option to include textboxes (which the PC version explicitly includes via the 'include footnotes and endnotes' checkbox), so that may account for the difference.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]