Replacing "
" in an Excel file with a tag - Trados 2019

Question

I have an Excel file where soft returns are coded as text (
). I want to convert them to tags to get them out of my way. They often appear after segment-ending punctuation (period, exclamation point, question mark) without a space between the two, resulting in segments that can contain multiple sentences. 
 Source text in Excel and resulting segment in the converted file: Blah blah blah.
Text text text. 
 I would like: 
 Segment 1: Blah blah blah. 
 Segment 2: [tag]Text text text. 
 or 
 Segment 1: Blah blah blah.[tag] 
 Segmeng2: Text text text. 
 Working on a primitive level, I have prepped the Excel files by adding a space (search for ".
" replace with ". 
" (etc. for ? and !) to get the segmentation right, but I really would like tags instead of 
 -- they're distracting and make spell checking laborious (every "nText" has to be dealt with). 
 It would be wonderful to replace them with a tag and get the segmentation to work the way I want it to. The solution seems to lie in defining a tag in Embedded Content in the Excel file type and possibly also a segmentation rule. "\n" doesn't work for me, but my knowledge of regex is pretty limited so any number of things could be wrong or missing. 
 Does anyone know how to go about configuring this? 
 Thanks in advance!

Paul · Accepted Answer

Catherine Elen Dexter 
 Catherine Elen Dexter said: my version of Trados is 2019 SR2-15.2.0.1041 
 It might be worth you updating. That is an older version of 2019 and it may have a problem. But I cannot test that as I don't have all the older versions, only the latest in each major release. You should have Trados Studio 2019 SR2 - 15.2.8.3007. It won't cost you anything. 
 Catherine Elen Dexter said: Here's a sample of what my source files are like. 
 Than you. Here's a video explaining how to set up the filetype for your file:

Paul · Answer

Catherine Elen Dexter said: I believe it's best if it is at the start of the next segment when it falls after a .!? character without a preceding space. 
 Catherine Elen Dexter 
 In this case you would just create two rules: 
 (?<=[.!?])\n 
 That one would be set to exclude. It basically looks for the 
 only when it's preceded by the .!? character. And: 
 \n 
 This one set to include with text. 
 An important point as you have two rules for the newline is to make sure you order them correctly. So the exclude rule above the include rule. If you get that the wrong way around the include rule will always apply before the exclude rule gets the opportunity to be used:

Jerzy Czopik · Answer

Catherine Elen Dexter 
 Use the embedded content feature in the Excel file type BEFORE adding the file into your project. You need to adapt the file type in your project template used. 
 The regex needed to tag 
 is \n (double backslash n)

Paul · Answer

Catherine Elen Dexter 
 Just to elaborate on that... don't forget (if it's appropriate for your file) to set the advanced segmentation for the rule to exclude and this should have your file a lot cleaner so you don't have to handle the tags at all:

Paul · Answer

Catherine Elen Dexter 
 Catherine Elen Dexter said: if there are 2 
 at the start of the segment, only one of them gets "eaten" 
 Then you need to change your rules to suit. So far you didn't tell us this could happen. One 
 is \n, at least one (which seems to make sense) would be (\n)+ 
 Catherine Elen Dexter said: I am seeing a strange behavior that is causing me some extra work: when I receive an updated version of the source file and bring it into Trados, the 
 tags are gone in unchanged segments when the 
 is the first thing in the segment. 
 in the middle of a segment is still there. 
 Same problem as before. If you don't set the advanced rule to be "include" then this is exactly what will happen.

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Replacing "\n" in an Excel file with a tag - Trados 2019

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