I can't even prep the provided file in Studio 2015. Studio seems to simply stop working. My 2015 is SR3 - 12.3.5181.10 which is slightly different than users.

Unknown said:

Is there a fix for this problem for Studio 2015, or at the very least a way to anticipate when it's likely to occur?

Since your version of Studio 2015 can work with Word files, I would like to offer a quick QA step you can do while the issue is being looked at.

1. When you create a new project, make a habit of adding an extra language for QA step.
2. This extra language can be anything, but I would suggest that is something clear to anyone who might open your project that it is a language for QA, something you've never come across as a target language for example.
3. Prep as usual and complete project creation wizard.
4. Go to Files and choose the extra language for QA.
5. Run a custom batch task and choose Pseudo-translate, Generate Target Translations
6. In Batch Processing option for Pseudo-translate task, make sure to modify the settings as follows.
   • Check the box for Append characters to the start: $1$2$
   • Check the box for Append characters to the end: $3$4$
   • Choose Apply pseudo-translate from the dictionary
7. Open the generated target in MS Word.
8. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click the arrow next to Find, and then click Advanced Find.
9. Go to Replace tab and click More >> and make sure to modify the settings as follows. 
   • Find what: $1$2$?@$3$4$
   • Replace with: (null, empty, nothing)
   • Check Use wildcards
10. Click Replace All
11. If you see any text other than whitespace left, that would indicate the text did not get extracted by Studio.

Thank you,

Naoko