"Probability score": 0.6

"Question improvement suggestion": Please provide more details such as the exact error message you're encountering, the steps you've taken to try and resolve the issue, the type of documents you're trying to align, and any recent changes you've made to your system or software. Also, please confirm if you've tried the workaround suggested in the context.

In the meantime, based on the information you have provided, here is a suggested answer to your question:

Hello,

It seems like you're having trouble aligning documents in Trados Studio 2024. This issue was previously addressed in the Cumulative Update 4 for Trados Studio 2021. If you haven't already, I would recommend upgrading your Trados Studio to the latest version. You can find the update at the bottom of the article linked in the context provided.

If you've already updated and are still experiencing the issue, you could try using the keyboard shortcuts for aligning documents and opening alignment:

Step 1: To align documents, use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+M.

Step 2: To open alignment, use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+A. Alternatively, you can go to File, then Open, then Open Alignment on the menu.

If these steps don't resolve your issue, please provide more details as suggested above so we can better assist you.

I hope this answer addressed your question. If not, please reject the answer, add the question improvement suggestion information, and click the RWS Community AI checkbox on the right to try again.

RWS Community AI

 Jennyfer Poirier 

Please tell us which format the files have that you are trying to align. Ideally, you could upload a sample source file and a sample target file.

Thank you,

DAniel

Hi Daniel,

I always use Word documents and have no issues, but today it doesn't seem to be working. I have also tried with PDF documents, same issue.

Thank you,

Jennyfer Poirier 

So these were two Word files, containing normal text? Not images with scanned text? Was the text in the source file possibly protected or anything like that? (PDF files are a last resort, if you can help it at all, don't use them.)

Daniel

My client sent me their project as a PDF file, which I can usually use and work with without any issues. However, today, nothing seemed to work.

So, I converted the PDF file to a Word doc, and I just now noticed that some parts of the Word doc are in fact scanned text, which is probably why Trados doesn't recognize it. This is so weird, I have never had this issue before.

I don't understand why this particular PDF file is causing me so much trouble... Guess I will have to contact my client.

Thank you,

Jennyfer Poirier 

Yes, you need all text in both documents to be machine-readable, i.e. normal text, not images containing text. There are many ways to convert images containing text to machine-readable text (“OCR”), but you have to be careful if the content is confidential because most solutions work via the cloud. Some reserve the right to store your data to “improve their services”.

Adobe Acrobat Pro does a good job of converting PDF to DOCX, including OCR (optical character recognition). The standard Trados solution is this free app: https://appstore.rws.com/Plugin/Trados 197

I don't use this app, but it seems to be working well. Note that if you use OCR it's really advisable to tidy up the DOCX (Word) document before you use it in Trados Studio, so that line breaks are correct, spelling mistakes are sorted out and unnecessary format changes are removed. Might even be worth converting to plain text for alignment purposes. (The documentation to the app linked to above is a good start.)