When I select a specific document, then the “word frequency” seems to work fine. But when I select a folder or an entire draft, in Scrivenings mode (as the manual suggests), the result in the stats is zero words, and a completely blank frequency chart. I assume I’m missing something obvious, but I can’t figure it out. Any suggestions?
Project -> Text Statistics -> Word Frequency
The follow-up question is: can I grab and/or export the word-frequency list once I can actually generate it? Scrolling through the tiny little window is frustrating, and it would be useful to export someplace like Excel where I could sort and filter it.
The text statistics are currently coming off the binder selection, so to get the stats for multiple documents, you’ll need to select them all in the binder. You can hold the Alt key while clicking the arrow node to expand the Draft to also expand all its subcontainers, then Shift+click to select from the Draft to the final document there.
There’s no way at the moment to copy the stats out of the panel, I’m afraid, but we will be revamping the text statistics in the next major version, so we may be able to include something like that then.
Hi, MM – many thanks for the clarification on how to select for the stats query (apologies if I missed it in the generally-fabulous manual). Would be nice to be able to copy-and/or-export stats in a future version; but now that I can scroll through results, would not be all that high on my list.
– Ken
I don’t think you missed this; the manual is using the same text as the Mac version, and this is working a little differently in Windows at the moment, so it’s not correct.
That would be good news. Not being able to do anything with the word frequency list led me to go find a third party tool for that - AntConc (antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/antconc_index.html). So now I compile to plain text, using Preset Replacements as sort of a stop words list and then load it up in AntConc.
But if you’re already considering revamping that, I have a few suggestions:
Being able to export the list obviously being the first thing.
A configurable stop words list to filter out the cruft you don’t actually care about. (Although I did read an article where something interesting was discovered based on the higher than average frequency of “and”…)
Being able to define a lemma list to get the frequencies of different forms of a word.
Getting a bit further afield - NGrams and Keywords would be absolutely killer features as well, and might tie in nicely for people trying to use Scriv for qualitative data analysis per that recent thread…
And while I’m wishing… concordances and colocations as well.
Do you actually have any idea when the test statistics panel will be reworked? As it stands right now, the panel is locked and cannot be resized. When you click the Word Frequency arrow, the floating panel is too narrow to comfortably see your statistics.
As a new user of Scrivener, I really like the program and its possibilities. The thing that I find frustrating is that when you compare the Windows version (the one that I’m stuck using) with the Mac version, I am beginning to feel that the Windows version is unregistered shareware (even though that I paid for the program). I am looking forward to the day when the features of the Windows version finally catches up to the Mac.
Are there any milestone dates as to when the next Windows version of Scrivener might be released? I would love to be even a beta tester just to see the new features of this software unfold.
Sragone, I totally agree. I see often statements that they are adding all the features of the mac version, but most of them have been 5 years ago. I have yet to really see any changes to make the skeleton windows version catch up to the mac version. The beta fixes have been bug fixes and tiny changes to tabs and such, but nothing that actually gets windows version to the mac version. I would think that by now some of the features would be completed after all these years. I have wondered if they really ever intend to do so as promised. I see no reason to buy a mac computer just for this one program as they really aren’t much more then a word/graphic arts processor.
