Handling embedded Excel content in Microsoft Word files

Question

Hi, 
 We have created a project in Studio 2017 with word files containing Excel embedded content and clicked the options enabling embedded content in all Word and Excel versions as well as XML but the content does not appear in the editor view. 
 We would like to know the word count for this embedded content and for it to be translated, would you be able to help? 
 Thanks in advance, 
 Camille

Paul · Accepted Answer

Hi Rossella Mastropietro 
 I think we need to investigate why this would not work before looking at longer workarounds. So make sure that you are not using Project Templates for your project and if you are then make sure that you made the appropriate changes in your project templates and not just File -> Options. Make sure that you have noted where I made this change... not in File Types but in the separate node underneath File Types that is only for Embedded Content Processors. 
 I created a quick video showing how I did this and then at the end the longer workaround if you really can't make this work. Perhaps this will help:

Paul · Answer

Hi, 
 
Just to wrap this up. The problem in this case was that the embedded Excel files were XLS and not XLSX. Studio can only handle embedded Excel files in the newer formats. The solution is one of these: 
 
Use XLSX files 
Redo the embedded files as XLSX, so unzip the DOCX and take the files from the embedded folder, resave as XLSX and insert them into the original file through the Word interface in place of the XLS files. 
 
Translate separately 
Take a copy of the source file, unzip the copy and add the XLS files to your project so you handle them as XLS and not embedded files within Word. Once complete put the translated XLS back into the embedded folder of the translated Word file. 
 
Ask client to redo 
Probably the easiest for you, ask the client to redo the file with XLSX instead. In this case one of the files was XLSX, five were not, so seems likely the customer could do this.

Paul · Answer

Hi Rossella Mastropietro 
 You need to make sure you set up the excel filetype under "Embedded Content Processors" and not under "File Types". So this one: 
 
 Then when you have activated the Word option to extract embedded objects such as Excel Studio will use the default embedded content processor, So my little example file looks like this:

Patrick Hopkins · Answer

I just ran into this problem 7 years after this answer was posted and I found that there is in fact another workable solution in addition to the 3 suggested by Paul in the case of embedded XLS files (instead of XLSX (or PPT/PPTX etc). 
 The document I was working on had 54 embedded XLS files and there was no way I could get the client to redo everything with XLSX. So I had to find another solution. 
 What most people don't know is that DOCX files are essentially ZIP archives containing a bunch of other files. In fact if you use a program like 7-ZIP you can "open" the DOCX archive just like any other ZIP archive and see the documents contained within. 
 Once opened, in the word/embeddings folder you will find all the embedded files that you can extract, just like any other ZIP archive. So all you need to do is extract these files to some folder on your computer and then add them to Trados for translation (XLS, PPT whatever). 
 Once translated, export the translations to their original XLS format MAINTAINING THE SAME NAMES. Then go back to the DOCX archive, delete the original files in the word/embeddings folder and copy the new translations in their place. 
 At this point the work is essentially done, but you'll have to take one more step to "finalize" things. To simplify the reading of the Word document, what you see in the document as you read it is not the original embedded file but rather a snapshot bitmap image of the XLS file. This means that if you open the translated Word document you will still see images of the original embedded XLS files. So to finish things you should reopen the Word document and click or double click on each embedded file which will force Word to load the translated external XLS file then simply click outside the embedded file to force Word to generate a new bitmap image based on the translated content. 
 That's it, you're done.

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Handling embedded Excel content in Microsoft Word files