When setting up a file format configuration for Microsoft Excel, there are many options to choose from to ensure the translation is successful. This page will explain the most common options for Excel files.

The following file extensions are supported when setting up file format configurations for Microsoft Excel: .xls, .xlt, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xltx, .xltm, .xlsb.

Please click on a section to see specific information regarding a configuration option:

To learn more about working with file format configurations, please see the following pages:

General Tab

The General Tab contains options for choosing what type of content will be translated and what portions of the Excel file will be extracted. For example, a custom configuration would be helpful if you desire to only extract certain columns, rows, or sheets for monolingual content or when the translation will be for a multilingual content.

Mono or Multilingual Content - The default Excel file format configuration is set up to translate monolingual content. This option may be used to create a custom configuration with specific extraction rules for monolingual content or to translate multilingual files. A custom configuration is necessary to translate multilingual Excel files.
Remember

Bring additional metadata to your multilingual configurations by means of custom fields for segments!
Columns - These options may be used to configure specific columns to extract from the Excel file and for choosing to exclude hidden columns from the translation.
Rows - These options may be used to configure what row the translation will start on and for choosing to exclude hidden rows from the translation.
Sheets - These options may be used to cconfigure specific sheets to be translated and for choosing to exclude hidden sheets from the translation.
Other Content - Extract or exclude document properties, headers, footers, sheet names, and user comments from the translation.
Text Segmentation - Enable/Disable SRX rules for text segmentation and choose to spilt or not split text at line breaks. By default, the system segments the document by cell, this means that if there are three sentences within a cell, they will be considered one segment. If SRX rules are enabled for text segmentation, the sentences will be segmented at each punctuation mark or line break (as defined by the SRX rules). The default or a customized set of SRX might have splitting text at line breaks disabled. In this instance, you can enable "Always Split Text at Line Breaks" to ensure this portion of segmentation is handled correctly.

Do Not Translate

The Do Not Translate Tab provides options for configuring items to exclude from the translation such as certain text colors, words, or segments of text.

Colors - Choose specific text colors to exclude from the translation such as red, blue, or green. **Please note that the chosen color in the configuration must precisely match the text color in the Excel source file for the text to be excluded from the translation.
Segments - Enter certain texts or regular expressions for Wordbee Translator to locate and exclude from the translation. Any text that does not match entered texts or patterns is automatically considered by the system to be translatable. Regular expressions may be entered in the system to protect entire segments or just terms with the file. A good example is entering terms or regular expressions to protect brand names or confidential content like software codes.
Words or Terms - Enter single words, terms or segment portions to exclude from the translation. Any text captured by regular expressions are converted to markup to avoid modification. If no description is entered, than the original text will appear when the translator hovers over the markup in the target file.

Whitespaces & Symbols

The Whitespaces & Symbols Tab provides configuration options for managing whitespaces and characters that are not letters nor digits within the translation.

Elect to show or exclude leading and trailing whitespaces within the translation.
Elect to convert or not convert multiple whitespaces into markup within the translation.
Elect to show or exclude leading and trailing characters that do not contain letters nor digits within the translation.
Elect to convert or not convert words containing no letter nor digits into markup within the translation.

Reduce Markup

The Reduce Markup Tab provides configuration options for substantially reducing markup. Less markup means better translation memory hits and less work for the translator. Be careful with these options because removing markup may lead to translated documents with minor to small differences in fonts and text styles.

Remove Irrelevent Font or Style Changes - Choose to ignore formatting changes applied to whitespaces or to texts that do not contain letters nor digits during translation.
Visually Reduce Markup in Translation Editor - Merge adjacent markup elements into a single markup to preserve the original styles and fonts of the source file during translation. When enabled, the translator will not see individual markup elements. This option is disabled in the default configuration.

Embedded Files

The Embedded Files Tab provides options for extracting other Office files that have been embedded into Microsoft Excel files (Excel, PowerPoint, and Word Files). These options are disabled by default, but may be enabled to extract this type of content for translation.

Note: The system will extract all the content from an embedded file and not necessarily just the visible content.

QA

The QA tab allows to specify minimum and/or maximum lengths for each translation segment. This constraints are applied to the whole segment, for each language available.

Limits can be customized for different source columns with absolute char values, percentages or even from values from a given column in the file.

For a given source column, the system selects by priority the first limit in the list that explicitly refers to this column.

View our Microsoft Excel file format Questions and Answers section to learn how to perform common file format customisations. These examples are the most frequently answered by our support team.