If you have DOCX and create project on your own, use embedded content and create corresponding rules for the tags. It is not that complicated. Or ask the customer to provide you html file (or other format) instead of DOCX with tags, which is a ridiculously dumb way to treat such content.

This article explains how to do in the way Jerzy has already mentioned:

https://gateway.rws.com/csm?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0023568

Thank you for the information about embedded content. I'll experiment with it a bit to see if it solves my problem. To clarify, do I need to add a tag pair for each Html tag that is used in the source text to be able to use it as embedded content? There is no way to say that "everything which is within '< >' should be considered a tag"?

Update: After adding tags to the filter and restarting Trados, the tags still don't appear as tags. I read that I would have to re-open the ms word source file in Trados to make these tags work.

Is there a way I can re-open the source file, without losing the work I've already translated?

Philip Sundt said:

Is there a way I can re-open the source file, without losing the work I've already translated?

Yes, just use the translation memory from your current work. Make sure, all translated segments are already stored there. Unless you have the Professional version this is the only way.

Thank you Jerzy, I'm new to Trados so this is not all clear to me. How can I make sure that my segments are stored in the TM that I'm using? I do use ctrl + Enter after every translated segment, so it should be added to the TM. Do I need to do something more?

I really appreciate your quick answers.

When the file is closed, right-click the file, chose batch task, run update main TM. Then create a new project with the same TM.

Thank you, instead in my complete lack of patience before asking the previous question about the TM, I chose to try to right-click the project file and choose "update file" and upload the original source file as the update file. For some reason, Trados pre-translated the whole file with NMT, and overwrote all my work. The TM had not been updated and is therefore empty. I have absolutely no idea what setting populated the file with NMT (I have mymemory and sdl language cloud inserted in addition to my own TM).

I assume there is nothing I can do to recover the previous version of the file to get my work back?

This is strange, as you wrote " I do use ctrl + Enter after every translated segment, so it should be added to the TM". So please check, if you ar really using the same TM.

And there should also be some backup from yesterday at least... Is your file stored in any cloud? If so, you could also try to look for versioning there.

Jerzy, I created a new TM for this specific project, and I am sure that I am looking at the same TM. It says it's empty

As I started the project this morning, I have not backed it up to a cloud. 

Also, after adding several of the tags to the embedded content settings, and then recreating the project, the file looks like this. I assume this is not right.