Foreword

A couple of weeks ago I have at least decided to upgrade my primary machine (64 bit, Intel^® Core™ i5-3350P CPU @ 3.10 GHz – RAM 8.00 GB) from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 10 Pro (now supported by a recent Cumulative Update for Windows 10 for x64-based Systems [KB3105213]) and then from MS Office 2013 to MS Office 2016, assuming all possible risks connected to this decision (I was quite frightened, to be honest, but that’s it!).

Story of a file to translate and to deliver in a couple of days

Granted that in this initial period I did not encounter any problem with most recent files formats (MemoQ, XML, MS Word-Excel-PowerPoint docs), on last Monday a client of mine sent me a *.doc (yes…, *.doc, NOT *.docx) to translate from English to Italian, probably created using an old version of MS Word (2003???).

Well, no problem at all. I opened the file in MS Word 2016 and saved it as *.docx file [checking the box Maintain compatibility with previous versions of Word] as here below (Italian UI):

Then I imported the file in TS 2015 without any problem using the file filter “Microsoft Word 2007-2016”,

and I started the translation as usual.

While translating and checking the original file I noticed that some text was missing in the Editor view of TS 2015 when compared to the original file itself (this page was missing, to be clear):

Missing text in TS 2015 Editor view.

The above missing text should have been present between segments 64 and 65.

At this point I generated the final (temporary) target document, and when I tried to open it in Word 2016 I got the following message (We are sorry. We can’t open ORIGINAL FILE_Maintain_compatibility.docx because we found a problem with its content), reporting the messages of the following picture:

After a moment of understandable panic, I kept calm, I dealt with the problem and I found two solutions to solve the issue.

• I saved the original *.doc file WITHOUT checking the MS Word 2016 File save as… box Maintain compatibility with previous versions of Word, and I reloaded the saved *.docx file in TS 2015 using again the file filter Microsoft Word 2007-2016, obtaining a correct TS 2015 Edit view and final target file.

• I used the previous MS Word 2016 file after having saved it CHECKING the File save as… box Maintain compatibility with previous versions of Word , but, this time, using the TS 2015 file filter Microsoft Word 2007-2013 as here below:

And also in this case all worked properly (both in TS 2015 Editor view and in the final target file).

I do not know if this is a problem of TS 2015 file filters, or a problem of MS Word 2016 files structure, the fact is that this could lead to another problem (word count). In fact, the two TS 2015 word count reports are obviously different as some text is missing: 3225 words against 3505 words.

Conclusion

Apart what above, up to now I have not encountered any other problem using the combination Windows 10 –> MS Office 2016 –> SDL TS 2015.

Thank you for your attention and I hope this might help all colleagues and the SDL “Gurus”

Claudio Nasso

EN-PT-SP-FR to IT Translator and DTP Specialist