Why is the word count of PowerPoint documents excessively different when comparing in MS PowerPoint and SDL Trados Studio

When counting the number of words in a Microsoft PowerPoint file, I get significantly different results using the word count in SDL Trados Studio and in Microsoft PowerPoint.

There are two issues in Microsoft PowerPoint that cause incorrect proper word count:

1. A non-breaking space is not recognised as word separator; therefore two words separated by a non-breaking space are counted as one word in Microsoft PowerPoint.
2. A full stop is counted as a word in Microsoft PowerPoint.

Microsoft PowerPoint has not been designed as a word processing tool and so can be incorrect in counting words. To address this issue, SDL recommends that the word count is done in another tool, for example, SDL Trados Studio or third party word counting applications.