The release of SP2 introduced a couple of nice enhancements to the filetypes that haven’t been publicised, but for the right use-case could be very useful indeed. These enhancements revolve around using colours..!
Highlight Text in Microsoft Word
The first example relates to translating Microsoft Word files (DOC and DOCX) and having the ability to mark up text in the fully formatted target file that requires attention by the reviewer. To do this there are new QuickInsert button(s). So for a DOCX you have a single button to apply the highlighting:
And for DOC you have two… the first is Apply and the second is Force Off:
Actually it only looks like this in the default settings for me because DOCX is using more of the spaces up… so if you also see this then look in here under the full list of available QuickInserts and you’ll find them both:
To apply the highlighting in DOC or DOCX however you only need the apply. So just select the text and click on the Apply HighlightColor or use the keyboard shortcut. If you select the text and do this then there is no need to force off at all.
So my document in Studio can now look like this:
if you are displaying tags you will see them like this in the target document but you should not receive errors for a mismatch with the source.
Microsoft Word can recognise these tags and will apply the appropriate formatting onto the text when the file is opened in Word.
One interesting comment I came across from a user who found this feature helpful is that Studio can only highlight in one colour..! So you only get yellow, and for this user the client used different colour highlighting for different stages in the review process. So she actually wanted green..! But this made me look at Word because there you have a pretty cool search and replace tool that can actually replace the colours of the highlighting. So, my target document now looks like this in Word:
To get green I first change the highlight colour to green:
Then I activate the search and replace window and click on <<More (1.) which provides more options. In these options I can click on Format and choose Highlight (2.)
If I do this with the cursor first in the search box and then again in the replace box, with nothing entered into the fields at all then I see the word Highlight added underneath the field boxes (3.)
If I now run the search I get this:
Which is exactly what I wanted… green highlighting..! Maybe you already knew this… but this capability was a neat find for me.
Non-translatable text in Microsoft Excel files
This feature is even more hidden than the previous one… especially if you don’t loko at the filetypes very much… and I have to confess when it comes to the Excel filetypes (XLS or XLSX) I don’t… unless I’m adding some embedded content rules. To find this feature you go to Tools -> Options -> File Types -> Microsoft Excel 2007-2010 (or 2000-2003 ) -> Color and you’ll find this new addition to the options:
So I can take an excel file with content like this:
If I open this in Studio I see this:
Now this is a simplified example, but assuming I didn’t want to make the product codes available for translation then I could use regex to filter them out in the display filter, and I could use regex to convert them to protected placeables… but if I didn’t want to do that, or if the text wasn’t as simple as it is in this example then I could apply a colour to the text and restore it later… like this… note the range of colurs here matches the ones in the Excel File Type Options so it’s easy to make sure you get the right one:
So I choose orange and colour all the product codes in orange. Then I select the same orange in the Excel File Type settings and open the file in Studio:
Much better… and easier to avoid mistakes and the effort required to work through the file.
It is a colourful world..!
