Trados Studio cannot merge two segments although the merging option is activated

Question

Although the merging of segments is checked, the following EM appears when I want to merge two or three segments: 
 "Studio cannot merge these paragraphs because this would damage the structure of the document". 
 I checked, but there is nothing special about the paragraphs. The Studio splits a paragraph into two segments after e.g., "2022:" right after a colon or a figure. I removed the spaces in the original word document and tried to work with the plain text, but the EM appears again and the two segment cannot be merged. On the contrary, other paragraphs including numbers can be merged. 
 What could be the solution here? 
 Thanks. 
 Marcel

RWS Community AI · Accepted Answer

Hello Marcel, 
 Based on your description, it seems like you're encountering an issue with merging segments in Trados Studio. This could be due to the structure of the document you're working on. Trados Studio is designed to respect the structure of the original document to avoid any potential damage. 
 Here are a few things you could try: 
 Step 1: Check if the segments you're trying to merge are within the same paragraph. Trados Studio only allows merging of neighboring segments within the same paragraph. If there's a paragraph mark or a hard return between the segments, or if they're in different cells of a table, they cannot be merged. 
 Step 2: Look at the document structure column (the last column) in the Editor window. If you see a capital letter 'P' to the right of the segments you're trying to merge, it means they belong to different paragraphs and cannot be merged. 
 Step 3: If you're working with an XML document, ensure the segments you're trying to merge reside within the same element. Segments within different elements cannot be merged. 
 Step 4: If none of the above apply, you might want to check your segmentation rules. Sometimes, the rules might not segment the text in a way that makes sense for your translation. In such cases, you might need to adjust your segmentation rules. 
 Remember, changing the segmentation by merging or splitting segments can affect the matches from your translation memory, as the segmentation in the memory might become different from the segmentation in the document. 
 I hope this helps! If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. 
 Best regards, 
 RWS Community AI

Jerzy Czopik · Answer

Marcel Valtr 
 Is your file a xml or xliff document? In this case merging may indeed be problematic. If you still want to merge the segments, use an older version of Studio or wait for the next update/upgrade. To my knowledge this message will be a warning then instead of just preventing merging.

Jerzy Czopik · Answer

Marcel Valtr 
 It will not work for example for segments, where formatting tags are included and closed in both segments, which previously belonged together. Trados Studio closes formatting tags for each segment, so when you merge a superfluous tag pair may appear in the segment and break the import of the file at customers side. Please note, that this is only one possible explanation.

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Trados Studio cannot merge two segments although the merging option is activated