Word file corrupting after saving file via Save Target As more than once

Question

Hi there 
 A Word (docx) file is opened in SDL Studio (2017 or 2019) and translated. The file is saved using "Save Target As" via F12. The output file writes over the original docx file and will open fine in Word. 
 If the file is saved via F12 again, with or without making changes to any segments, Studio reports the file as saved but Word says "The file xxxx cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents". Even saving via "Save Target As" using a different name results in a corrupt Word file. 
 This does not happen with all files. Indeed, some Word files will become corrupt just "Saving Target As" the first time (this appears to be a bookmarks problem, but not entirely sure), while others can be re-saved multiple times with no issue. Also, it happens with files (i) sent from clients, (ii) created locally with copy/pasted text or (iii) extracted from PDFs, however, once again, some files are affected regardless of how they were created and others are not, i.e. the source of the file is apparently not a root cause of the issue. 
 When this happens it is highly annoying, especially if I have spent an hour or two adjusting the initial Word document (e.g. after a PDF extraction) prior to opening it in Studio, as the original file is overwritten and now corrupt, so has to be recreated from scratch (or re-downloaded, or whatever). 
 Would appreciate any help with this, it occurs quite often.

Daniel Hug · Answer

Hi Simon, 
I did not experience this problem with Studio yet, but Word files are known to be, well, corruptible. 
My four cents of wisdom: 
1) Create a backup file before you open the file in Studio, especially if you spent a lot of work on preparing it. 
2) Since corruption as you describe it does not happen systematically with all Word files, it might help to "save as" a legacy Word version (as legacy as you can, maybe Word 97-2003 or RTF), as this will simplify the formatting of the file. Open it again and save it as docx and it should be less prone to cause issues. 
3) Word files seem to corrupt more easily if you copy/past images with the clipboard. Inserting them with the "Insert-Image" function is more stable. This might be true for other clipboard-inserted content, too. 
4) If your Word file contains not much more than text, copy the text into a plain text editor like Notepad++. Either use the plain text file as translation source or copy the text back into a clean Word document. 
All the best! 
Daniel

Greta Magyar · Answer

Hi simon foakes , 
 
Just to confirm, you can use these two options instead of 'Save target As' and thus the file might not get corrupted at all. 
 
'Export files' can be used even mid-project, to have a look at the native target file, while 'Generate target translations' is more useful to get your finalised target file once the translation is completed. 
 
Best wishes, 
Greta

Ulrich Schramm · Answer

Hi Simon, 
 How I hate this error message (The file xxxx cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents). I spent many hours on it until I found the following solution. It's not professional, but it's always better than copying each segment separately. 
 I hope it works for you, too. All the best! 
 Save the Word. docx file in Word as a Word. doc file. Work with the Word.doc file in SDL 2019. After the reverse conversion (SDL 2019->Word) Word can open the file without problems.

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Word file corrupting after saving file via Save Target As more than once

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