Copying source formatting to target

Question

Hello I'm becoming extremely frustrated with text formatting in the target segments, 
 I have a document which seems to be reasonably well formatted (typeface and text size) but target segments are highly variable. I don't want to have to copy the source to target segment every time and then delete it. Is it possible to just copy the formatting from source to target? There don't seem to be any tags in particular to copy over. 
 I've already seen a couple of posts giving quite extensive shortcuts but none seems to include the one I'm looking for. 
 Thanks, Mark

Walter Blaser · Answer

Mark 
 You can easily and very quickly transfer formatting from source to target using the QuickPlace function (CTRL-comma or CTRL-click), but you need to do it individually for each tag/tag pair. 
 It is not possible to copy the entire formatting because localisable formatting such as bold, underline, italic, footnotes, etc. may be in different places in the target segment than in the source segment, hence the need to transfer them one by one. 
 If you want to be sure that you see all tags including the ones that are hidden by default, make all tags visible by clicking on "Toggle formatting display" in the "Option" section of the "view" ribbon. 
 Walter

Paul · Answer

Hi Mark, 
 If you have these changes it is because they are in the source file. Try pressing Ctrl+Shift+H as this is the keyboard shortcut for the setting Walter suggested you try. This will allow you to see the formatting tags in the editor and place them more easily. 
 It does sound as though you are dealing with a converted PDF perhaps. It's not uncommon for poor quality PDF files to take on strange characteristics when OCR'd such as the following, all of which are going to be controlled by tags: 
 
 font changes (size and font type) for no apparent reason, the OCR tool just thought the font looked different 
 different spacing between the letters 
 different shades of grey when it was probably just all black (or some other colours perhaps) 
 
 There are plenty of other issues possible too. I'd recommend you review this article from Emma Goldsmith : 
 
 Regards 
 Paul

Paul · Answer

Dear Mark, 
 
From your screenshots it looks as though you are not transferring the formatting from the source to the target, and you are also not showing the formatting tags as suggested to make this easier for you to see. Some authors manually change the fonts and misuse the underlying styles in Word. Word doesn't care about this because you never see the control tags, but any CAT tool does care and will need to present you with the ability to handle the control tags because it has no idea whether they are important or not. 
 
Can you share a small source document containing only this part of the text? It might be easier to see what's going on if we can see the file. 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

Paul · Answer

Hi Ana, 
 Can you also try pressing Ctrl+Shift+H to reveal any formatting tags. You should find there are tags controlling the font in these segments that you need to place in the target side. 
 Regards 
 Paul

Trados Studio > 1. Trados Studio

Copying source formatting to target