Problem with C&P:ing a Wf word file to Excel - urgent help needed! Thread poster: T-K Noranta
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T-K Noranta
Finland
Local time: 10:52
Member (2006)
English to Finnish
+ ...
Hi,
I translated a huge Excel sheet with Wf in Word 2003 by copy-pasting the text from Excel 2003 to an empty Word document. I did a test in the beginning, which showed no problems, so I went on to translate the rest, believing there'd be no problems pasting it later.
Everything went well, but when I went to paste the translation into the original Excel doc last night, for some reason the cells didn't want to match! About 150 rows down something went wrong and the tran... See more Hi,
I translated a huge Excel sheet with Wf in Word 2003 by copy-pasting the text from Excel 2003 to an empty Word document. I did a test in the beginning, which showed no problems, so I went on to translate the rest, believing there'd be no problems pasting it later.
Everything went well, but when I went to paste the translation into the original Excel doc last night, for some reason the cells didn't want to match! About 150 rows down something went wrong and the translated text is now one cell ahead of the original. It is crucial that the original and the translation row numbers correspond.
At one point Wf started to complain about segmentation problems, but as it only told me that the doc being in table form might slow down segmentation, I didn't think it'd be a problem.
The translated table looks different in Excel as well, the borders are thicker.
I could of course copy and paste the text row by row, but the doc is enormous and I need to hand it in 12 hours ago...
I'll be eternally grateful for any advice! ▲ Collapse
| | | | chance (X)
French to Chinese
+ ...
Just click the cell that starts to be wrong with right mouse button, then select insert…
In this case, you can add the missing cell.
| | | | Jerzy Czopik 
Germany
Local time: 09:52
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
| Did you use any soft line breaks? | Jan 25, 2008 |
At any soft line break (SHIFT+ENTER in Word) Excel starts a new cell.
Should you have used any of them, remove all and try again.
If there were any soft line breaks in Excel (ALT+ENTER), they are correctly intepreted in Word, but replaced with Word's soft line break (SHIFT+ENTER) - you will need to remove them too.
| | | | | You don't need to copy/paste | Jan 25, 2008 |
Wordfast can translate in Excel directly. Just open the spreadsheet and then open a new empty document in Word and start translating. Wordfast will copy one cell at a time to the new document, translate it and copy it back. If there are any columns/rows you don't want to translate, just right click on the column/row header and select "hide". WordFast will only bring over the visible cells.
Assuming you still have the TM, it might be worth starting over and doing this.
F... See more Wordfast can translate in Excel directly. Just open the spreadsheet and then open a new empty document in Word and start translating. Wordfast will copy one cell at a time to the new document, translate it and copy it back. If there are any columns/rows you don't want to translate, just right click on the column/row header and select "hide". WordFast will only bring over the visible cells.
Assuming you still have the TM, it might be worth starting over and doing this.
Failing that, you can move blocks of cells within Excel by Cutting and Pasting. It doesn't matter if the source and destination overlap. So, select the first cell that goes wrong and then select the bottom cell (shift-click) to select the block. Cut it and then paste it to the where the first cell should be.
For example:
If A150-A999 should be in A149-A998, Click A150, Shift-click A999, Cut, Click A149, Paste and everything will move up one cell.
You can fix all the borders in one go by clicking the column header to select the entire column and then Format | Cells | Border tab. Clear all the borders (or set them to whatever you want) and all the cells will be done. If you click the top left corner (between the letters and numbers) you can select the whole spreadsheet and set all the borders (or any other formatting such as font) at once.
Terry. ▲ Collapse
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T-K Noranta
Finland
Local time: 10:52
Member (2006)
English to Finnish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
The original is in column 2 so I paste the translation to column 3.
When I paste from Word, I can see that there are altogether 7 "extra" translation cells at the bottom of the Excel file (original amount of rows 1731).
chance wrote:
Just click the cell that starts to be wrong with right mouse button, then select insert…
In this case, you can add the missing cell.
Thanks! I tried that but without success...
| | | | T-K Noranta
Finland
Local time: 10:52
Member (2006)
English to Finnish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Jerzy Czopik wrote:
At any soft line break (SHIFT+ENTER in Word) Excel starts a new cell.
Should you have used any of them, remove all and try again.
If there were any soft line breaks in Excel (ALT+ENTER), they are correctly intepreted in Word, but replaced with Word's soft line break (SHIFT+ENTER) - you will need to remove them too.
Thanks Jerzy!
What exactly are soft line breaks? I didn't use them - not intentionally in any case
My PC speaks only Finnish (I do a lot of localization so this is useful for term checks). I've a laptop with excellent English, but it's currently in hospital, so cannot check there.
If there were any soft line breaks in Excel (ALT+ENTER), they are correctly intepreted in Word, but replaced with Word's soft line break (SHIFT+ENTER) - you will need to remove them too.
There may have been. How can I remove them and from which file?
| | | | Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 09:52
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
| Use Search & Replace in Word | Jan 25, 2008 |
In Word press CTRL+H
In the row "search for" enter "^l" (without quotation marks), enter a single space in the row "replace with" and press "replace". Word will find first occurance of the soft line break (if any) and you will see where it could possibly be. If you have such, replace them with a space.
This could help.
J.
| | | | Adam Podstawczynski (X)
Local time: 09:52
Polish to English
+ ...
What exactly are soft line breaks? I didn't use them - not intentionally in any case My PC speaks only Finnish (I do a lot of localization so this is useful for term checks). I've a laptop with excellent English, but it's currently in hospital, so cannot check there.
Hi Tanja,
The soft breaks Jerzy mentioned are the most probable cause of the problem. When you display the "hidden characters" in Word (see Tools->Options->Display hidden characters or similar), you will see that some lines in your Word file end with an arrow; this is where Word inserted soft line breaks. When you copied the text back, all soft line breaks got converted into new cells.
It happens a lot in my translations. I don't know whether it is the best way to solve this or not, but I usually do as follows:
1) Replace soft breaks in Word with any other unique character or group of characters, e.g. @@@ (in order to find "soft breaks", type ^| in the search field in Word).
2) Paste the text to Excel (now there should be no cell-shifting problems).
3) Replace back the @@@ marks in Excel with either spaces (which can be done automatically) or line breaks (Alt+Enter --> this must be done manually, as Excel does not support automatic substitution with line breaks).
Hope this helps.
[Edited at 2008-01-25 11:19]
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Adam Podstawczynski (X)
Local time: 09:52
Polish to English
+ ...
You also mentioned a formatting problem after pasting the table back to Excel. This can be repaired by clicking the small icon available in the right bottom corner of the pasted box and selecting "use target formatting". Usually works better then the default "use source formatting".
Adam
| | | | T-K Noranta
Finland
Local time: 10:52
Member (2006)
English to Finnish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Still no luck... | Jan 25, 2008 |
Thanks Jerzy and Adam!
Adam Podstawczynski wrote:
You also mentioned a formatting problem after pasting the table back to Excel. This can be repaired by clicking the small icon available in the right bottom corner of the pasted box and selecting "use target formatting". Usually works better then the default "use source formatting".
Adam
I tried this before, also without success
I tried to find the soft breaks, but 'search' tells me that I cannot search for ^| apparently it's "not valid".
| | | | Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 09:52
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
| Did you have "Use wildcards" selected? | Jan 25, 2008 |
If so, deselect it.
^l is a valid character for the search.
You can also use ^11 instead, has the same effect.
| | | | Ken Cox
Local time: 09:52
German to English
+ ...
| a handy tool | Jan 25, 2008 |
It's not possible (well, at least AFAIK) to search for soft returns in Excel (unlike Word).
There's a very handy package of tools for Excel for those of us who aren't programming wizards, and one of the things it can do is replace characters or character strings with soft or hard returns in Excel.
The tool is ASAP Utilities, and you can download it FREE from www.asap-utilities.com<... See more It's not possible (well, at least AFAIK) to search for soft returns in Excel (unlike Word).
There's a very handy package of tools for Excel for those of us who aren't programming wizards, and one of the things it can do is replace characters or character strings with soft or hard returns in Excel.
The tool is ASAP Utilities, and you can download it FREE from www.asap-utilities.com
Follow the instructions for installing the software.
To use it to insert returns in Excel, first replace all the 'redundant' hard or soft returns in your *Word* text (the ones that are supposed to be inside a particular cell in the Excel version) with a unique character or character string (e.g. $LF$). Paste your text back into Excel, and then click the ASAP Utilities menu in Excel. Select 'Range' and then 'Find/Replace in all sheets' in the popup menu. In the window that appears, enter your character string in the 'Find what' field and select or enter the replacement 'string in the 'With what' field. Then press the button and say 'wonderful!'.
ASAP saves the values you enter in the find and replace fields, so you can use it the next time without having to enter the values again. That's my idea of user-friendly software.
[Edited at 2008-01-25 12:22]
[Edited at 2008-01-25 12:22]
[Edited at 2008-01-25 12:23] ▲ Collapse
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T-K Noranta
Finland
Local time: 10:52
Member (2006)
English to Finnish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | What can I say... | Jan 25, 2008 |
Jerzy Czopik wrote:
If so, deselect it.
^l is a valid character for the search.
You can also use ^11 instead, has the same effect.
You've made my day
^11 worked like a charm. I don't know why, but I couldn't save the original doc after pasting the translation - perhaps because it was protected? So I saved it under a different name as a normal Excel sheet
Thanks everybody for your help, it was very much appreciated
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