I love Scrivener and I am using it to write my first book. I have enabled the Target Words per day feature which is where the bug really shines.
If I accidentally “split at section” it creates a subdocument entitled “chapter header-1”
The target words do not change, however if I were to ctrl-x the entire subdocument and paste it back into the original, Scrivener says that those are now “new” written words which alters the target word count for the day.
I have tried resetting my computer, closing Scrivener, and other little quick fixes, but I am unsure why this is happeneing… any suggestions?
Admittedly, I never use the target function. But I still have a suggestion: When you paste in text it is correct that Scrivener increases the count of the “written” words—how should it know you just moved them? But what if you (re-)merge the two sections you have created accidentally?
I have not tried the merging aspect. The word count at the bottom of the page does not change when I do this but the target (pressing ctrl+shift+t) is added to. I currenly have it telling me I typed almost 4k words today (which I have not).
I will definitely try this next time I accidentally do it. I am using prowritingaid as well, so when the prompts come up, sometimes both get clicked at the same time due to its popover.
I can’t say if and how that works on Windows but on macOS I would simply change the keyboard shortcut for the splitting function to prevent the accidental splitting.
It sounds like you might have the Allow negatives setting disabled, in the Targets options, under the “Session Target” tab? With this setting you will indeed get inaccurate results when performing larger movements of text via cut and paste. For example:
You type 15 words.
Split the document which had 4k words, into roughly 2k word chunks.
Go into the second split and select all, then cut. Your 15 words are deleted and the counter goes down to zero because it isn’t allowed to go down any further.
You go back to the first chunk and paste, which adds 2k to today’s session, way over the 15 you’ve really done.
If Allow Negatives is enabled, though, then on step 3 the session counter would jump down to -1985 temporarily, and then when pasting the 2k words, back up to 15 where it should be.
The daily word count is a nice feature, but it seems to consider text that has been cut from one location in a folder and pasted in another as new words. It would be nice if there was a way to tell Scrivener that the contents of the cut buffer should not count toward the new total when they are pasted.
I’ve merged this into an existing discussion on the same topic. Please refer to my post above, which might explain what you are seeing, as the software already does subtract cut text.
This was helpful. I’m wondering now, though, if there’s an easy way to get word counts for arbitrary combinations of folders. For instance, my layout (windows) shows the total in the ‘Manuscript’ folder at the top, left of center, and the current number ‘written’ in session at the top right of center. The count for individual chapters is at the bottom when they are open. However, I haven’t found a way to get a total for ‘Part 1 plus Part 2’ of three parts within ‘Manuscript.’
Select whatever binder items you wish and toggle the view to scrivening.
The count will be at the bottom of the editor. That’s one way.
When selecting a folder, no need to select its content.
If you want a more permanent setup, another way is to tweak Project Targets to show as per the current compile last saved setup, and have it set (the compile panel) as if to compile only what you want a count for.
The Project ▸ Statistics... panel has a “Selected Documents” tab, just for this purpose. It is also the most accurate counter in the software, as it can take the time to perform calculations that are otherwise too expensive for the real-time progress bars and footer bars—like adding footnotes from the inspector, or subtracting inline annotations.
