This is a rather common error with Trados regardless of the version you are using. Mine is the latest and it still makes the same mistake.

Nevertheless, I have come to a solution after trying several things, including starting from scratch.

My original problem was that Trados converted my Word files into XML files and then would not allow me to open them with Microsoft Word. The result is that I could not have a Word document with my translation after so many hours of hard work.

Even though the source Word documents were in perfect condition, Trados would convert them into XML documents again and again and the problem still remained.  I was about to give up and start just copying and pasting before I was running out of time before delivery.  

BUT I FOUND A SOLUTION THAT WORKED FINE!

Since the source documents were fine and could be opened with Word no problem, I opened them and saved them as  .rtf files.

RTF stands for RICH TEXT FORMAT. This is a standard type of format that works fine with Word in most cases and even Trados is capable of dealing with them actually better than it deals with Word or pdf documents.

So, I created a new project with the rtf files and translated them with the memory that I had already created.

After fiddling with Trados funny behaviour about what is to be translated automatically and what is not, for whatever reason we do not know, I could produce a new translation in a shorter time than just by tedious copying and pasting. And this time YES! I could produce a target document that worked fine even though I got a warning from Microsoft Word about loosing some characteristics. Whatever.....

My advice is to convert the source documents into rtf files before creating a new project. They normally work better with Trados than any of Word versions: doc, docx, etc...

I hope you all find this useful and saves you some extra hassle and plenty of time.

Good luck,

This is a rather common error with Trados regardless of the version you are using. Mine is the latest and it still makes the same mistake.

Nevertheless, I have come to a solution after trying several things, including starting from scratch.

My original problem was that Trados converted my Word files into XML files and then would not allow me to open them with Microsoft Word. The result is that I could not have a Word document with my translation after so many hours of hard work.

Even though the source Word documents were in perfect condition, Trados would convert them into XML documents again and again and the problem still remained.  I was about to give up and start just copying and pasting before I was running out of time before delivery.  

BUT I FOUND A SOLUTION THAT WORKED FINE!

Since the source documents were fine and could be opened with Word no problem, I opened them and saved them as  .rtf files.

RTF stands for RICH TEXT FORMAT. This is a standard type of format that works fine with Word in most cases and even Trados is capable of dealing with them actually better than it deals with Word or pdf documents.

So, I created a new project with the rtf files and translated them with the memory that I had already created.

After fiddling with Trados funny behaviour about what is to be translated automatically and what is not, for whatever reason we do not know, I could produce a new translation in a shorter time than just by tedious copying and pasting. And this time YES! I could produce a target document that worked fine even though I got a warning from Microsoft Word about loosing some characteristics. Whatever.....

My advice is to convert the source documents into rtf files before creating a new project. They normally work better with Trados than any of Word versions: doc, docx, etc...

I hope you all find this useful and saves you some extra hassle and plenty of time.

Good luck,