Okay, I’ve searched the forum, I’ve searched the manual, and I’m baffled. In outliner mode, all of my statistics columns except the one headed Total Words show 0, and all progress bars are blank.
I am using the common structure of each folder representing a chapter and containing one or more documents with the text of the chapter. In outliner mode, the Total Words column shows the total words for all of the text documents in every folder. The column labeled Words, however, shows 0 for every folder. Shouldn’t one of these columns show the word count for the folder and the other show the total word count for the entire draft?
I’ve set both a project goal and a session target in Project -> Show Project Targets, but all the progress related columns in outliner are completely blank. The column headed Total Target shows 0 for every folder. The column headed Target also shows 0 for every folder. Both the Progress bar and the Total Progress bar are completely blank.
These would all be great tools if I could get them to work. Surely I am simply missing something obvious here. Can anybody point me to what it is?
You may be looking at the “Total Target” field – which is actually a field that you set. For example, if you would like to write 500 words in that document, you would edit that field and place “500” in it. The “Total Progress” field will then show how close you are to reaching that goal. You can also set this Total Target words property by opening the document in question, then clicking the small bulls-eye icon in the lower right corner of the editor window (to the right of your Words and Chars count).
What you are probably wanting to see though is the total number of words that you have actually written in each document. For this, you will need to add a column to your outliner view called “Total Word Count.” You can enable this column by going to View->Outliner Columns->Total Word Count.
EDIT: I do realize that in your original post you stated that you are looking at the “Total Words” column, but I just need to confirm that.
I have both Word Count and Total Word Count columns enabled. Total Word Count is showing me the total count for each file by adding together all of the documents in the file. Word Count reads 0 for every file.
What I’m looking for is the cumulative total for the entire draft, and the cumulative progress against the target I have set for the draft. Surely with two progress bars, two columns related to target, and two columns related to word count, both of those pieces of data should be in there in those six columns somewhere…
Ah! If you want totals for the finished manuscript, you need to open Project->Project Statistics. If you select multiple documents before opening this dialog, it will also show you rolled up totals for those documents. Be sure to also click on the “options” tab and review the settings that you see there to make sure you understand what those totals are including.
Cumulative progress against your targets can be seen by opening Project->Show Project Targets.
Thanks, but I do know all that about Project->Project Statistics (although I didn’t know about how to set the count for a specific document with the bullseye thing, and I do thank you for pointing that out).
The issue I was raising here is why the heck are there six columns in outliner mode for word count, targets, and progress, when the only one I could get to show any data was the Total Words column, which included only the total number of words for that single file. Now, thanks to your help, I can also get data in the Total Target column and the progress bar associated with it.
But then what is supposed to show in the Words column and the Target column with its associated progress bar where I only get 0’s now?
The difference between Words and Total Words is that Words only shows how many words are contained in the document itself, while Total Words shows the total number of words that are in the document (or folder) and any children it contains. So Folders will almost always show a Word Count of 0, but may have a higher Total Word Count (there are exceptions, as it is possible to add text to a folder, but most people don’t).
As for why some of the columns aren’t showing any information, some of them (like Total Target and Target Progress) only activate after targets have been set. Also, keep in mind that only text that appears in the main text area of a document is counted. In other words, document titles and synopsis are not included in these totals. If you’ve created a document and written a synopsis but haven’t actually added any text to the main text area, that document will still show 0 words.
It can be a little confusing, but hopefully this has helped.
I don’t think it is all that confusing when you remember that “Words” shows the word count for the individual document and “Total Words” shows the total word count for that document and all its subdocuments. In Scrivener, remember, there is no difference between a folder and a text document other than the icon (folders are just special kinds of text documents).
Respectfully, it seemed intuitive to me that ‘Total Words’ referred to the entire draft, and ‘Words’ referred to the specific file (inclusive of all its documents) that constituted that particular line item in outline view. And I’m still not sure what the difference is between ‘Target’ and ‘Total Target,’ but now I gather they they too refer only to the file (inclusive of all its documents), not the entire draft. That really wasn’t obvious until you and the previous poster explained it, at least to me, and I couldn’t find any reference in the manual that explained it either.
“Total Target” and “Target” have the same relationship as “Total Words” and “Words” - that is, “Total Target” shows the accumulative target for the document and all its subdocuments. So, a folder with a target of 1,000 words but containing 0 words, and two subdocuments, one with a target of a 100 words and containing 50 words, and the other with no target and containing 200 words, would have a total target of 250/1100.
I do appreciate that “Total” may be slightly misleading here, although it is a total for the group. The trouble is the there is very little space in the outliner columns - “Accumulated Word Count For Group and Subdocuments” wouldn’t fit, and I can’t think of a more concise description for what it does (and yet it is something that many users wanted, which is why it was added). If you can think of a more concise and accurate description, I’d be happy to consider changing the column title.