In the past, project statistics has provided me with a decent gauge of my progress. Lately, it has refused to budge regardless of my adding scenes and pages. Today, after checking a document to see it was 540 pages, my project count went down by 17 words. I have no recollection of making any changes. What can I do?
If this were my project, I’d review my project to make sure that all new documents are a part of the Manuscript or Draft root folder. And, if you have compiled recently, perhaps run a fresh compile in case that’s affecting the counts.
If the statistics panel still doesn’t correct its data, you could create a new project using this same project template and then open the new project side by side on your computer with the existing project. You could drag the contents of the existing project’s Binder into the new project and test that new project.
If it’s working correctly, it can become your new, working project.
Before jumping to creating a new project, I’d also take a look at the options in the statistics dialogue. There are various settings here that will limit what documents in your project are being counted, so most likely the problem you’re seeing is from the interaction of these and the binder or compile setup.
For instance, if it’s the compiled statistics count that is off and Count current compile group only is ticked in the options tab, your results will fluctuate based on the compile settings—and if compile is set to only compile the current binder selection, then every time you have a different item selected in the binder you’ll be getting a different count in the statistics pane.
In your case, with the count staying consistent even as items were added, I think it’s more likely that either those items are not within the Draft/Manuscript folder in the binder as Ruth suggested or compile is set currently to compile only a specific subsection of the Draft that doesn’t include those new items.
The compiled statistics will also take into account text added or removed during compile. If, for example, you’ve changed switched some documents from a section layout that used the binder name as a title in the text to one that leaves it out, that would decrease the word count in the statistics.