File Import Settings
    1. Phrase
    2. Phrase TMS
    3. File Import Settings

    Spreadsheets (MS Excel based)

    Content is machine translated from English by Phrase Language AI.

    Cells containing only numerals and functions are skipped as it is assumed they do not contain data relevant to the import.

    Spreadsheet documents containing more than 10,000 cells with conditional formatting and are processed with Multilingual Excel, Excel with html (Process HTML code) or Excel with Convert to Phrase TMS tags filters will be rejected as too large/complex.

    Important

    Issues with tags are a common cause of export errors (e.g. File couldn't be generated), especially for file types such as spreadsheets (MS Excel based) and .XML. Always ensure tags and formatting are correct before exporting files by running quality assurance checks.

    Files processed with the above-mentioned settings (Multilingual Excel, Excel with html and Excel with Convert to Phrase TMS tags filters) are converted to XML on import. Most formatting, graphs and images are lost. Embedded macros in .XLSM format will be lost as well.

    AI chatbots can be very effective at identifying format problems in .XML based files.

    In-context preview can only be generated for a maximum of 200 columns in an imported file. Files with more than 200 columns will display the warning In-context preview was not generated. This limit does not apply to the columns that are marked Hidden in the original file.

    File Types

    • .XLS

    • .XLSX

    • .XLT

    • .XLTX

    • .XLSM

    • .XLTM

    OpenOffice or LibreOffice documents (.ODT, .ODS, or .ODP) are supported, but saving them in MS Office format before importing is recommended.

    Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are automatically converted to .DOCX, .XLSX, or .PPTX, when imported via the Google Drive connector.

    Import Options

    • Cell flow

    • Import comments

    • Import sheet names

    • Import hidden columns, hidden rows, and hidden sheets

      By default, hidden content is not imported.

    • Import other text

      Extract special values/names/attributes of the file which are not usually translatable.

    • Process HTML code

      In cases where file contains HTML tags (<b>, <span>, etc.)

      • Disables options other than Convert to Phrase TMS tags

      • HTML import settings cannot be used to edit the default settings.

      • Cell flow "Rows, left to right" is applied

    • Convert to Phrase TMS tags 

      Apply regular expressions to convert specified text to tags.

      Disables options other than Process HTML code.

    • Import selected columns

      Enter a comma separated list of columns, e.g. A,C,Q.

    Multilingual Spreadsheet Files

    Multilingual files are imported as multiple bilingual jobs with languages mapped before import. They are represented with multilingual_xlsx.pngin the Jobs Table. If imported into several target languages, the Completed file is composed of all target languages.

    • Hidden sheets are not processed.

    • Merged cells in target columns are not supported.

    • Dates and formulas where the displayed cell contents depend on the locale or the underlying values (f.e. "boolean values" TRUE or FALSE) are not exposed for translation but automatically copied to the target columns. Tip: to expose such values, you need to format cells in the source MS Excel file as Text before the value is inserted.

    • Source or target segments containing only numbers are not imported for translation.

    • Some files cannot be converted to multilingual files due to software packages or versions of those packages.

    • Shared .XLSX files (Shared Workbooks) cannot be imported as multilingual files.

    • When creating a job, if the file has standard language codes in the first row and the file type is set as auto-detect, it will be auto-detected as multilingual and be imported as separate jobs. Auto-detection is not applied to jobs imported from repositories.

    • Although QA does not return tag and formatting errors, export may fail with a File could not be generated error message. This can happen due to a different tag order on the target side which is revealed by adding custom QA checks.

      The entries in the fields are the same for the source and the target.

      for Tags order (unpaired):

      ^.*\{1\}.*\{2\}.*$ 

      ^.*\{1\}.*\{2\}.*\{3\}.*$ 

      ^.*\{1\}.*\{2\}.*\{3\}.*\{4\}.*$ 

      for Tags order (paired):

      ^.*\{1\>.*\<1\}.*\{2\>.*\<2\}.*$ 

      ^.*\{1\>.*\<1\}.*\{2\>.*\<2\}.*\{3\>.*\<3\}.*$ 

      ^.*\{1\>.*\<1\}.*\{2\>.*\<2\}.*\{3\>.*\<3\}.*\{4\>.*\<4\}$ 

    • When using the Update source tool on a multilingual file, all the associated jobs must have New, Emailed or Accepted status.

    Import Options

    Caution

    Separators other than commas are not supported and will trigger errors.

    • Use HTML subfilter 

      Imports HTML tags contained within the file. Tags can then be used with HTML file import settings. Paragraph tags <p> create new segments even if Segment multilingual XLS is not selected. When using the HTML subfilter, other options are disabled.

    • Segment multilingual XLS 

      Text is segmented by a general segmentation rule rather than one segment per cell.

      Caution

      Applying Segment multilingual XLS to a file that contains target text may result in a different number of segments in the source than in the target.

    • Set segment status of non-empty target 

      Select default confirmation status and whether confirmed segments are automatically added to TM.

    • Source (column) 

      Use lowercase or capital letters. For more columns, enter letters separated by commas with no spaces (A,D,G).

    • Target (column) 

      There is one column for each target language. For more columns, enter letters separated by commas with no spaces (B,E,H).

    • Import specific rows only 

      Enter rows to be imported (1,4,7).

    • Context key (column) 

      Specify a context key that is saved with the segment to the translation memory and used for match context.

    • Context note (column) 

      Columns are set as context notes (B,C). Notes will be displayed on separate lines.

    • Maximum length (column) 

      Sets the maximum length of the translation. Only integer numbers are supported. For more columns, enter letters separated by commas with no spaces (I,J,K). The character limit for each segment is displayed on the Context note pane inside the editor. Any character exceeding the limit is highlighted in red.

      If a cell is split to more segments, the maximum length limit will be checked for each segment separately.

    • Convert to Phrase TMS tags 

      Apply regular expressions to convert specified text to tags.

    Example: 

    Spreadsheet job options
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