Aligning documents stops midway

Question

Hello, 
 I'm trying to align two documents for a PerfectMacht analysis afterwards. I have done this before without any problems. 
 Now the alignment stops midway. 
 When I start the process, the green loading bar begins to fill and it is shown: 
 - "Reading source file" 
 - "Reading target file" 
 It even starts with "Merging", 
 but then it stops midway (for hours), I even can't stop the process, I have to force Trados 2015 to close via the Task-Manager. 
 Did anybody have the same problem and found a solution for it. 
 The new document to translate is 95% the same as the old, so the alignement would really help me out. 
 
 What I've tried: 
 - Made sure the documents can be read by Studio (when I load them as documents to translate it even gives me sdlxliff-files without a problem) 
 - deleted all links to other documents 
 - tried to save them as another filetype (.doc instead of .docx) 
 - deleted all graphics 
 
 Thank you for any suggestions!

Adrian Boloveschi · Accepted Answer

Hi Sina, 
 Still, there are a few more things that I would like to suggest, I don't like to leave problems unsolved :) 
 1. Open Word and open the files you need to align, BUT, instead of clicking on the Open button, click on the small arrow next to it and select "Open and Repair". Make sure you do this on a copy of the files and on both source and target. After doing this, try the alignment again.

2. Another possible cause can be the sheer size of your files. If the files are too big (it is not a good practice in general to use very big files) you can try the following workaround: 
 a. Open the source files in Studio and save them in an .sdlxliff format. You will have sdlxliff files that will have the target sections empty, that is what we want. 
 b. Use this Open Exchange app to split those sdlxliff files into smaller files: 
 www.translationzone.com/.../sdlxliffsplitmerge-827.html 
 c. Align the smaller sdlxliff files that you created with that app and import into your TM. 
 
 Let me know if any of these solutions helped, 
 Thank you, 
 Adrian

Trados Studio > 1. Trados Studio

Aligning documents stops midway