Parsing error when trying to save MS word file

Question

Hello all, 
 I have read several other threads on this topic but haven't managed to resolve my error. My Source File was a PDF and I am now trying to save the target translation into MS Word, but when I try to open the Word Target file I have created, it tells me that the file cannot be opened because there is a problem with the contents, "Details: Xml parsing error. Location: Part: /word/document.xml, Line: 2, Column: 3155" 
 I have tried running Verify in SDL Trados to check that all my tags are fine and I didn't come up with any errors in Trados. Other solutions have involved changing the format of the Word source document, but as mine was a PDF that will not help unfortunately. Can anyone please help? 
 The strange thing is that I could successfully save a target word file earlier in the project. The only thing I can think of is that recently I merged some segments and now it seems to not be saving my Target. However it's hard to know if that did cause the problem, as the successful earlier save occurred some weeks ago, so it may just be a coincidence. 
 Any help would be much appreciated! 
 Rosie

Paul · Answer

Hi Rosie Marsland , 
 
You didn't tell us what version of Studio you are using, but I do know that I have seen this with the new Word filetype in Studio 2015 and 2017 where the user is working with an older version of Microsoft Word. In these cases I was able to open the file without a problem in Word 2016. 
 
The solution in these cases was one of these: 
 
1. Don't worry about it as the client had a more recent version of Word and had no problem with the file 
2. Upgrade the version of Word to something more recent 
3. Try processing the file again by working on the DOCX and not the PDF. 
 
To do the last one the process would be this: 
 
1. Open the PDF in Studio using the single file approach (Ctrl+Shift+O) 
2. Immediately close it and you'll find a DOCX with the source content in the same folder as the PDF 
3. Clean up the DOCX - TransTools is a good approach - appstore.sdl.com/.../ 
4. Translate the cleaned up DOCX instead 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

Former Member · Answer

Rosie, For this type of problem, there is another quick solution. Just open the Word document using Google docs, which, go figure, just work. Once opened, save it under another name. Problem fixed. Regarding, the other solution, opening the inner document.xml of the Word document (there's a link to this solution in this thread), instead of trying to change something in this xml file, read the text close to the corresponding line and column, then look it up in the Studio editor, delete that segment, or redo it, then generate the target translation. Most likely, it'll work.

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Parsing error when trying to save MS word file