Control what changes "modified" status?

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I recently added a new meta-data field to aid in the organization of my book. However, upon updating the meta-data for each chapter the “modified” date now reads today.

I am in the process of revising/editing and really need to be able to track when the last time I actually wrote in those chapters, as opposed to the last time I changed some tiny detail in those chapters.

Is there any way to control what aspects will actually trigger a “modified” date?

I appreciate whatever help anyone may have.

Cheers.

Eric

2

Yes any content level change to the item is considered a significant event in terms of incrementing the modification datestamp. The main text area is only one component of what makes up an item, and deciding which components are worth an increment or not isn’t a science. Most people who consider changing the synopsis or notes fields significant, for instance, and I think most consider any form of meta-data modification to be significant as well.

I do think there was a request to make a text-only modification datestamp available, and Keith turned it down, but I can’t seem to locate that conversation so I could be imagining things. :slight_smile: I myself am more in the camp that needs the text content to be considered the only significant component—so what I do is make use of the Status field to track what has changed against what has not. Whenever I start working in a section, the first thing I do is set its status marker to “Revised”. I’ve found that rough binary statement to be good enough for how I work. I don’t really know to know when something changed as much as to know that in this particular revision of the project, these items over here were modified at the draft level. YMMV.