Love the app - best writing package I’ve ever seen by a country mile.
Got a couple of little bugs that I’ve noticed that still seem to be in v2.4.1
Word Count errors
I expect the word count to be accurate but it can be a few thousand short.
My current novel is 99,500ish halfway through the second draft. I export the outline to excel and have a simple sheet that lets me track progress (percentages and stuff like that). I update the spreadsheet manually after editing each scene by putting the number of words in. It doesn’t always reconcile, and can be a few thousand words short. The only way it seems to fix is by pressing down through the entire outline and then it corrects.
Difficult to know exactly what’s going wrong - it’s like some internal counter isn’t getting updated. It’s happened on both books I’ve written in Scrivener.
Project Notes
I like to have the project notes view visible in the standard view so I can keep a track on things to fix. I expect it to save notes.
When I reopen the file which I’ve saved, it doesn’t always reflect the update project notes (I’ve moved these off to Clear, my to-do app, as it’s too unreliable).
Again, difficult to say exactly what happens or how it’s caused (it seems to happen less often in v2.4.1.
I’m seeing the same wordcount bug in the OSX version (2.4.1). I’m using the Outliner view with the total columns showing, so that I don’t require a separate spreadsheet (I used to do it the same way as Ed, until I worked out that I didn’t need it). However the wordcount on individual documents keeps being under-reported, sometimes as low as zero - which was a bit of a shock the first time I saw it! I clicked on the document and all my text was there, and when I went back to the Outliner the total had been updated.
It’s possible that this is happening on documents that I have recently looked at or maybe ones that were selected by a project-wide search - I haven’t yet pinned down the exact circumstances in which it happens.
I am having the same problem with the project notes. It doesn’t happen every time I close and reopen a file, but it happens often enough that I now don’t dare actually use what was once one of my favorite Scrivener features. If I enter a project-wide note that says, “Remember to change X throughout the first half of the book,” then I expect that note to still be there by the time I’ve finished my first draft and am going back to revise! When the notes do revert, it always seems to be to the very first version of the note.
I think I have fixed the project notes bug, although I’d be grateful to anyone who can provide me with steps that reproduce the issue so that I can test the bug fix properly.
I cannot reproduce the outliner word count bug, though. Can someone please provide me with the steps necessary to reproduce it?
I’m seeing a perhaps related issue with word count. If I open project targets, the session target usually seems reasonable but the manuscript target sometimes is clearly short (by as much as roughly 5000 words).
I’ve had a little trouble reproducing this on demand, but here’s what seems to happen. I started this morning, and my word count for the manuscript was 34509. That seemed low, since I was at roughly 35000 last weekend. So I wrote it down, thinking that perhaps I’d run into a bug, and started my session.
I get about 200 words into it and the phone rings. While I was on the phone I absently looked at various settings. I checked the Show Target Notifications box in the Project Targets options dialog before unchecking it.
After I hang up the phone, I notice that while my session target is about where it should be (193 words) my manuscript target is up to 38274.
I realize this may be user error, but I’m not really doing anything to the project except adding to it.
mwgrice - the option you mention has no effect on the overall count, so I’m not sure what is going on there. I’m afraid I really need a reproducible case (steps to reproduce the problem), as at the moment I can’t get any such bugs to trigger and I can’t see anything obvious wrong in the code (which of course doesn’t mean there’s not a bug there; only that I can’t find it without some help).
Thanks!
maharg41 - just click in the session target box to change it. If that won’t work, click on “Options…” and make sure that “Automatically calculate from draft deadline” isn’t ticked.
I’m having the same word count problem. Unfortunately, I can’t reproduce the error on command. It’s almost random as to when and where in the outline it happens. But here’s the problem, as best I can describe it:
Usually after I’ve left my session open (I save frequently, but usually leave the session open for several days at least), I will come back to work and notice that my project word count (in my manuscript target) and session target word counts are inaccurate (I set my session targets based on my goal end date and target manuscript word count). Looking at the outline, I’ve added the total words column and the Include in Compile checkbox on the right hand side of the screen. If I click through all of the text documents in the outline, I notice that one or more of the text documents have a word count of zero, even though there is text in the document. If I go in to edit the document and return to the outline, the wordcount will usually correct itself. Or, if I quit and reopen Scrivener, the word counts will always correct themselves, and will be accurate for all of the text documents.
I hope that makes sense. It’s been really annoying to deal with, so I hope you can find the bug and fix it.
I’m sorry, but I’m really unclear on where the problem lies - the original issue here was reported about the project targets, but you seem to be talking about a separate issue entirely pertaining to the outliner, is that correct? Unfortunately there’s not much here for me to go on and no one else has ever reported anything like this, so I’m going to need more information. Can you please try to get it to happen again and look for any triggering factors, and also can you take a screenshot the next time it happens?
Thanks,
Keith
I’m experiencing a similar issue, and likewise, cannot replicate it on demand.
The issue occurs for me in the number of words in the Manuscript Target of the Project Targets module. Occasionally, the Manuscript Target will change from my manuscript’s current word count, to some random (and usually significantly lower) number. The first time I noticed this, I panicked, thinking that I had accidentally erased a chunk of my manuscript. That didn’t happen.
What fixes the behavior, in my experimenting, is when I go to Project–>Project Statistics… That gives me an accurate word count for the manuscript and also seems to fix the number in the Project Targets module.
nmhall - I’m taking part in NaNoWriMo myself this year, and I have seen the issue you are talking about twice, the second time just now, with the targets showing me being 10,000 words under what I should be. Loading the draft text into scrivenings mode and then reopening Project Targets cleared it, but obviously there’s a bug lurking here somewhere. I’m going to investigate this tomorrow.
Okay, I think I’ve found it! Could you please tell me if your project has been open for more than a couple of days? Project Targets uses a cached word count for documents that haven’t been opened in the editor, or the word count from the actual text if the document has been opened and is in memory. But Scrivener removes documents from memory if they haven’t been opened for a couple of days, and I found a bug whereby project targets would use the cached word count from before a document was opened and edited if the document had since been removed from memory again because it hadn’t been used for a couple of days.
I think you nailed it there, it was reverting to a word count from probably around the last time I shut down Scrivener. Which reminds me, I should probably do that more often just so system resources aren’t always tied up!
