I’ve been working on a book and got today I just got to over 55,000+ words on the total word count (The bar when you click it becomes a search bar. After I nearly finished for the evening I just checked and I’m at 37,300. The document hadn’t been closed and was just working on a single section this evening.
I reloaded a backup at around 52,000 and another at 54,000 and went through chapter by chapter checking comparative chapter word totals against the more recent sudden 37,300 one. The 37,300 by chapter is the most recent and is showing the most words in each individual chapter section as totalled on the bottom bar. I can’t find anything at all that is suddenly missing.
Very nervous with the software now. Does anyone know what happened for the sudden nearly 20,000 total word drop in the main document word counter?
The most likely cause is that the “missing” words are in a document that is not included in the current Compile group.
(Compile is the function that you use to assemble the component files of your manuscript when you’re ready.)
The Outline view is the fastest way to check the word counts of a group of chapters. Use the View -> Outliner Options menu to enable the Word Count column.
I think I was having too much of a heat attack seeing the sudden word drop to think straight! I was clicking around in the compile section earlier and unclicked a bunch of sections and then decided not to compile and cancelled so didn’t think for a moment after clicking cancel it would change anything.
Just went back and ticked the boxes again, then cancelled back out of compile and now the word count is back up to 56k+