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Unreliable Word preview behavior

Adrian Komiński

The preview in Word behaves in an unpleasant and unreliable manner on my PC. Be it "Microsoft Word" or "Embedded" display mode, the yellow highlight is laggy, it often takes several seconds for the highlight to "find its place" in the document - jumping between sentences (or text fields, for instance) before settling on the target one. It sometimes disappears and reappears without any intervention on my part; often the whole preview (in Microsoft Word) will crash and then reopen. Sometimes the highlight won't display at all.

All this makes this important feature pretty much a useless waste of time.

I've had problems with alleged Office incompatibility in the past - see https://community.sdl.com/product-groups/translationproductivity/f/90/t/18778

...but I have a genuine MS Office downloaded from a Microsoft online source. The MS Word (Office) is Professional Plus version 1809 (compilation 10827.20138, Quick install [or whatever the English translation of this is]). Regarding the "quick install" - when installing Office I couldn't choose any "installation mode", whether quick or slow, so I'm not sure what this is about.

My question is: has anyone experienced anything similar? How does the highlight work in your case - does it switch between sentences/words/text fields in the blink of an eye, or is there significant delay?

If my Word is a suspect, then WHICH Word version exactly should I buy to be sure that it will work properly? Is the most expensive box version available in physical stores the ONLY option? That would be pretty ridiculous and unfair, and would probably cause problems to about half of the users who purchase their Office on the web, have it included with their PCs, etc.

Needless to say Word preview worked beautifully in Trados 2011 with Office 2007... (couldn't help it, Paul)

BTW: I created a new topic since the issue from the former one somehow resolved itself: Trados won't refuse creating a preview anymore - but it still works like crap.

EDIT: tried doing the embedded preview, and Trados actually gave me an error, so... yeah, should've posted this in the old thread. But then, I don't even need the embedded preview at all.

One silly thing with the external preview ("Microsoft Word") is that you can't set it to display the source document content - and you can't disable its auto-updating/refreshing, which, as I believe, partly (or wholly) causes the lag and instability. All this gives an impression that the developers have just intentionally left us with a function that is slow and unreliable. Hopefully I'm wrong though, and it's just my case.
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  • 0

     

    On this we can agree!

    Unknown said:
    Needless to say Word preview worked beautifully in Trados 2011 with Office 2007... (couldn't help it, Paul)

    But the problem here is not Studio, it's Word.  Once Microsoft moved to their click to run installer they stopped providing the required components that are needed to be able to deliver an embedded preview.  So we have had to try and find other ways to make this work.

    Unknown said:
    EDIT: tried doing the embedded preview, and Trados actually gave me an error, so... yeah, should've posted this in the old thread. But then, I don't even need the embedded preview at all.

     

    Today I run the click to run version and can actually achieve all three variants of the preview without the problems you descibe so would be inclined to look at external influences first.  These would be things like you security software and available permissions to be able to run both applications smoothly.  Try disabling your security software temporaily, and any backup software you might be running and see if this helps.   If it does add things back in until you find the cause of your issue.

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
    Design your own training!
    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
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  • 0 in reply to Paul

    My sole security software is the wretched Windows 10 itself and its built-in security features. I'd gladly disable Windows 10 forever - and switch to Mac - had the different translation software I use been compatible with the latter.

    So, which Office SHOULD we buy, then?

    Besides, the thing sometimes works fine, and sometimes doesn't, due to which I'm not sure if I can buy your explanation! At this very moment I'm in the process of translating a file that keeps crashing on me every 5th segment or so, and then re-opening. Sometimes it won't even re-open, displaying some lame error (file couldn't be opened, or something) - and then opening again obediently when I re-launch the preview manually.

    This doesn't ALWAYS happen with every file, but it does so quite often, with different documents. I don't work with any "special" formats or anything. Just regular .docs / .docxs.
  • 0 in reply to Bruce Campbell

    Just so there is no confusion, here is what I mean in more detail:

    When the toggle is set to manual updating, the Preview window would still react to movements from one segment to another in the Studio editor, including moving down when a segment is confirmed. That is, the highlighting in the Preview window would switch to the new active segment and the display in the Preview window would move to show the new active highlighted segment if the new active segment was previously not shown in the Preview window.

    The only difference would be that when the toggle was set to manual updating, the new contents of the confirmed target segment would not be displayed in the Preview window until a manual batch update was performed.

    Best regards,
    Bruce Campbell
    ASAP Language Services
  • 0 in reply to Bruce Campbell
    Thanks

    I'll mention this, but I think he's looking at a better solution than this. Might be a good stop gap if it's easy to implement.

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
    Design your own training!
    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
    Tell us what you need in our Community Solutions Hub

  • 0 in reply to Adrian Komiński
    Paul,

    Could you please answer my question?

    "Paul, so what are your symptoms exactly when it comes to the imperfect preview? I have previously mentioned a number of issues (not merely lag). Do you experience any of them too? (crashing and restarting, etc)"

    It's pretty important to me as I'm not sure whether I should strive for any improvement in my Studio's performance or not (in other words: whether my Studio is misbehaving, or is it always this bad).
  • 0 in reply to Adrian Komiński
    Adrian,

    No I don't.

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
    Design your own training!
    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
    Tell us what you need in our Community Solutions Hub

  • 0 in reply to Paul
    So it's only the huge delay in highlighting/switching between segments after confirming, then?
  • 0 in reply to Adrian Komiński
    Sooo… SP1 is out, and the issue with faulty Word preview isn't mentioned in the release notes at all - not even in the "known issues" section. How are we to understand this - do the owners perceive stuff like imperfect MT repair mechanisms more important than the absolute uselessness of the core function that is Word preview? And why wasn't the problem even formally acknowledged? Or maybe I am missing something?
  • 0 in reply to Adrian Komiński

    Hi Adrian,

    I went through exactly the same thing: trying a feature, finding out there was a major problem and then expecting someone to fix it.

    My advice: Don't hold your breath.

    Studio is a massive piece of code with patches on patches on patches. Some parts have not been rewritten for decades.

    Point out problems, and they will hopefully be put on a very long list somewhere.

    If you are lucky, someone might look at what you consider to be a major problem. But there are so many problems that it could be years before it is looked at, or fixed, if it can be fixed at all.

    Studio does have a lot to offer, but I no longer expect all of its features to be useful. In fact, I find Studio to be much more reliable if I turn off all the bells and whistles and restrict my use to its basic functions, with as few as possible changes to the default settings.

    As I mentioned before, I gave up on the Studio preview many years ago and developed my own workaround with PDF files and Dragon commands, since Studio's preview might never reach a state where I feel it is good enough to use.

    Best regards,
    Bruce Campbell
    ASAP Language Services
  • 0 in reply to Bruce Campbell
    I know what you mean, but giving up on expecting improvements - or rather REPAIRS - of the core features we paid for sounds like a bad practice in capitalism, if you ask me.

    There might be dozens of some other issues with Studio, though I don't really experience any. The software is fine for me and I use it quite heavily and extensively, with the bells and whistles up and running. Only the preview function is definitely falling short in my eyes.

    What's outrageous is that they didn't even acknowledge the problem, instead focusing on some minor BS that's probably irrelevant to 95% of users, whereas functional Word preview is something I imagine most people would be willing to AT LEAST give a try from time to time.
  • 0 in reply to Paul
    A related problem that I have noticed is that, when using voice recognition (Dragon) the update to the preview pane captures the focus and takes it off the current segment, meaning that you have to manually put it back with the mouse every time you change segments...
  • 0 in reply to Adrian Komiński

    Hi Adrian,

    I am happy to hear that Studio is generally working well for you.

    I started scaling back on the bells and whistles and non-standard settings in an attempt to keep Studio running reliably.

    For example, I waited until Studio 2019 SR1 before trying to install Studio 2019 as there is typically a wave of bugs after each update. The wave appears particularly large with 2019.

    After a number of problems, I gave up on installing Studio 2019 SR1, and reverted to Studio 2017 SR1 by recovering my system from a backup.

    But even now I am encountering problems with Studio suddenly disappearing. The window just closes -- unexpectedly and apparently randomly, right in the middle of a job.

    Since I am running an almost "out-of-the-box" version of Studio 2017 SR1, I am pretty confident that the problem is due to the update from Studio 2017 SR1 CU7 to Studio 2017 SR1 CU15. (At least I hope that is the reason.)

    So, after reverting to Studio 2017 SR1 after attempting to install Studio 2019 SR1, I now have to revert from Studio 2017 SR1 CU15 to Studio 2017 SR1 CU7.

    Interestingly enough, both versions of Studio 2017 SR1 are available for download from the SDL website, so I imagine that SDL is also not completely confident about 2017 SR1 CU15 ...

    But I might not be able to revert back to CU7. After uninstalling Studio 2019 SR1, Studio 2017 SR1 refused to install, giving an error message that I had a newer version installed! So I had to recover my system from a backup in order to get rid of Studio 2019 SR1 completely.

    I might have the same problem when I try to revert back to CU7. I really don't want to go back to an old system backup from November (I don't keep all of my backups forever.)

    And even if I do revert back to Studio 2017 CU7 (by uninstalling and installing, or by using my November backup), my SDL account no longer shows a licence for Studio 2017. That disappeared when I attempted to install Studio 2019.

    So I also have to worry about the lack of a Studio 2017 licence. I might have to use a trial licence for a while, but I have seen people on the forum mentioning that you can't use a large TM for the trial version...

    As is usual with Studio, the whole process is full of question marks.

    The waves of bugs and lack of certainty following each update, and the Studio installs and uninstalls waste enough of my time. If I was also trying out fragment matching, LookAhead or other new (and probably buggy) features as they are introduced, then I would not have a clue where the problems were coming from, particularly since some of the bugs I have had to deal with are somehow passed on from one version to the next -- even if you do a clean install.

    But regardless of the difficulties I have with Studio, I still find it a valuable tool, even if I just use the basic features.

    I am just a bit cautious given the problems I have had in the past and wish I could simply install and uninstall the package, and revert back to previous versions without all of this fuss and uncertainty.

    Best regards,
    Bruce Campbell
    ASAP Language Services
Reply
  • 0 in reply to Adrian Komiński

    Hi Adrian,

    I am happy to hear that Studio is generally working well for you.

    I started scaling back on the bells and whistles and non-standard settings in an attempt to keep Studio running reliably.

    For example, I waited until Studio 2019 SR1 before trying to install Studio 2019 as there is typically a wave of bugs after each update. The wave appears particularly large with 2019.

    After a number of problems, I gave up on installing Studio 2019 SR1, and reverted to Studio 2017 SR1 by recovering my system from a backup.

    But even now I am encountering problems with Studio suddenly disappearing. The window just closes -- unexpectedly and apparently randomly, right in the middle of a job.

    Since I am running an almost "out-of-the-box" version of Studio 2017 SR1, I am pretty confident that the problem is due to the update from Studio 2017 SR1 CU7 to Studio 2017 SR1 CU15. (At least I hope that is the reason.)

    So, after reverting to Studio 2017 SR1 after attempting to install Studio 2019 SR1, I now have to revert from Studio 2017 SR1 CU15 to Studio 2017 SR1 CU7.

    Interestingly enough, both versions of Studio 2017 SR1 are available for download from the SDL website, so I imagine that SDL is also not completely confident about 2017 SR1 CU15 ...

    But I might not be able to revert back to CU7. After uninstalling Studio 2019 SR1, Studio 2017 SR1 refused to install, giving an error message that I had a newer version installed! So I had to recover my system from a backup in order to get rid of Studio 2019 SR1 completely.

    I might have the same problem when I try to revert back to CU7. I really don't want to go back to an old system backup from November (I don't keep all of my backups forever.)

    And even if I do revert back to Studio 2017 CU7 (by uninstalling and installing, or by using my November backup), my SDL account no longer shows a licence for Studio 2017. That disappeared when I attempted to install Studio 2019.

    So I also have to worry about the lack of a Studio 2017 licence. I might have to use a trial licence for a while, but I have seen people on the forum mentioning that you can't use a large TM for the trial version...

    As is usual with Studio, the whole process is full of question marks.

    The waves of bugs and lack of certainty following each update, and the Studio installs and uninstalls waste enough of my time. If I was also trying out fragment matching, LookAhead or other new (and probably buggy) features as they are introduced, then I would not have a clue where the problems were coming from, particularly since some of the bugs I have had to deal with are somehow passed on from one version to the next -- even if you do a clean install.

    But regardless of the difficulties I have with Studio, I still find it a valuable tool, even if I just use the basic features.

    I am just a bit cautious given the problems I have had in the past and wish I could simply install and uninstall the package, and revert back to previous versions without all of this fuss and uncertainty.

    Best regards,
    Bruce Campbell
    ASAP Language Services
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