I would love to have a placeholder that would give me the word count not for the whole project but for the individual file (chapter or scene file).
I know it’s there at the bottom of the editor, but what I want is to have a placeholder so it appears in a compile. I have a compile format that shows only Synopsis and Notes, and I want the word count to appear in the Synopsis, the way I can for other metadata.
Is this something that you are mainly looking to achieve as a report of sorts? If so, then I would suggest looking within the software instead, and in particular the Outliner tool. For statistics, have a look at §8.3.4, List of Available Columns, to see what kind of statistics are available there (lots!). If you’ve never messed with this view much before, or changed its columns, you’ll get there with the View ▸ Outline command at the very top of that menu, and will find it works best by selecting something fairly high level in the binder, maybe even the whole Draft. Scroll up a little bit from the section I referenced, to see how columns can be set.
Now if that’s looking like something useful, but you do still want a report, then try the File ▸ Export ▸ Outliner Contents as CSV... There should be no surprises as to what that does. 
Drop that into a spreadsheet and have at it.
Notes are the main ingredient you’ll be missing here, but there is no reason that using one tool means you can’t use the other. Compile for the bulk notes and text, CSV for the stats.
To speak on the placeholder, last I checked that’s a bit difficult to calculate by the time an accurate accounting could be made, because at that point the document has already been heavily formatted and is no longer comprised of many smaller parts.
You could do that by compiling ONE Scene or Chapter with underlying scenes at a time, depending on what depth you’re looking at counting–using the Current Selection compile filter after actually selecting which document(s) you wish to compile in the Binder.
The process would be somewhat laborious (user intervention intense and hence less desirable).
Considering you haven’t including compiling your script (Text) for this exercise, you’d still end up with an accurate wordcount by placing <$wc> placeholder, say at the beginning of your synopsis of your only document or your folder (only) containing other documents, even though the Text in your Section Layout has not been ticked for output.
You wouldn’t get a count per document by placing the <$wc> placeholder in each document’s synopsis. You’d get a repeat of the total selection count each time.
Thank you. While the spreadsheet format is less convenient, I’ll work with it. I do understand now the difficulty of including such figures in a Compiled output.
The trouble with Scrivener is, it’s so useful in so many ways, one cannot help but to find new needs one had never even considered with other software.
You’d get a repeat of the total selection count each time.
Yep, that’s what I saw. And now I understand what I’m asking for can’t really be had from that angle. Per AmberV, I’m taking a closer look at Outline output.
Thanks for the detailed reply.
