As you probably know, if users can afford Trados, it's usually because they translate for companies, which in turn pay them to keep their corporate confidentiality: we cannot afford (literally and figuratively) to go against these corporate confidentiality matters.

What Trados troubleshooting team should do as a start is to reintroduce the Word format that previously seemed to be among the only workable (though last-resort) solutions against that problem.

Then, to try and repeat the problem (in order to, as you say, “build some robustness around this where needed”), I can only give you general pointers as to what may cause issues in the file I have to translate right now.

Features of the file are as follows:
• DOCX file of about 3 Mb;
• 48-page document with table of contents;
• Includes about 36 figures and tables, including 31 images, plus a large image as a page cover;
• Highlighted copy in several colours throughout, including in the page footers (because the file was first processed in LogiTerm – for end-client purposes – before processing in Trados Studio 2017);
• After creating target file from Trados, I try to open it in Word 2017 – when I keep the table of contents, the Trados target file is unreadable; when I remove the table of content before processing it in Trados, the target file is fine, but I get this message before first opening it (in French, since that is the language of my system and applications), and I just choose the negative option: “Ce document contient des champs qui peuvent faire référence à d'autres fichiers. Voulez-vous mettre à jour les champs de ce document ?”; English equivalent would apparently be: “This document contains links that may refer to other files. Do you want to update this document with the data from the linked files?”

I think it summarizes the main file elements... but the key here is: TABLE OF CONTENT.
Once removed, everything goes fine.

Hi Louis La Bonté 

If only it was as simple as this.  In fact if it was we wouldn't be having this conversation!  Perhaps if anyone has this problem with a file they are willing to share then it would be helpful to have the file.

Here's one I spent a little time trying to use to reproduce the problem you painted:

Louis La Bonte.zip

I have no problems with this at all using the new filetype.

The reality is that there are so many things that could be causing this problem it is not going to be as straightforward as you have suggested.  So I'll just leave this problem open for the time being until we get a file in here, or in support, that allows us to find out what is causing this issue and then fix it.  It's not as widespread as you might think or we would certainly have a lot more complaints than this.

Regards

Paul

Hi Louis La Bonté 

If only it was as simple as this.  In fact if it was we wouldn't be having this conversation!  Perhaps if anyone has this problem with a file they are willing to share then it would be helpful to have the file.

Here's one I spent a little time trying to use to reproduce the problem you painted:

Louis La Bonte.zip

I have no problems with this at all using the new filetype.

The reality is that there are so many things that could be causing this problem it is not going to be as straightforward as you have suggested.  So I'll just leave this problem open for the time being until we get a file in here, or in support, that allows us to find out what is causing this issue and then fix it.  It's not as widespread as you might think or we would certainly have a lot more complaints than this.

Regards

Paul

UPDATE:

I tried your attached file, with my own version of Trados Studio 2017, and contrary to you, I could not open the resulting file in MS Word 2007. I don't know if it would open in later versions of MS Word, but the thing is, I need it to open in the 2007 version.

As you can see from image below (in French), the problem is an “Unspecified error” supposedly at row 2, column 142834 of a part named “/word/document.xml”

Note that I used the very same file as you, but renamed the resulting file as “[...]-processed.docx”, just to indicate it is how the file becomes AFTER processing in Trados: once opened as a new project, I saved the target file directly, without changing anything (not even a single line).

Just in case you would see something in my processed file that was not is yours, please find it attached.

pseudotranslated_toc_problem-processed.docx

Louis La Bonté said:

Just in case you would see something in my processed file that was not is yours, please find it attached.

Nope, opens up for me without any problems.

Louis La Bonté said:

I tried your attached file, with my own version of Trados Studio 2017, and contrary to you, I could not open the resulting file in MS Word 2007. I don't know if it would open in later versions of MS Word, but the thing is, I need it to open in the 2007 version.

Hi Louis La Bonté 

Please let me know if you can open the attached:

toc_problem.zip

If you can, please save it with a new name using your Word 2007 version and send it back to me.

Thank you

Paul

Nope, still does not work if I process it in Trados with the TOC:

But again, it does work if I delete the TOC before processing the file in Trados.

To make sure you can reproduce the situation with the same parameters as mine, please note that I use the following version of MS Word:

Microsoft® Office Word 2007 (12.0.6762.5000) SP3 MSO (12.0.6762.5000)

Please find attached the non-workable and workable versions of your file (respectively with and without the TOC):

toc_problem-with-TOC (processed as is in Trados - unreadable in Word 2007).docx

toc_NO_problem-without-TOC (processed in Trados without the TOC, opened in Word 2007, then re-saved).docx

Obviously, if I was able to delete the TOC, that's because I did open it in Word BEFORE processing it in Trados.

When processing it directly in Trados WITH the table of contents left unchanged, Trados sees no problem in it, and saves the target file without mentioning any problem, but THEN Word is unable to open it (see first file above).

When opening it in Word beforehand to delete the table of contents, THEN processing it in Trados (without the TOC) and FINALLY saving the target file, Word has no problem opening the resulting file and re-saving it (see the second file above).

That being said, here is what I get when I just open and re-save the document from Word 2007, without any processing:

toc_problem (opened and re-saved directly from Word 2007 - without being processed in Trados).docx

Hi Louis La Bonté 

Thanks for the file. Unfortunately it didn't help me. I wanted to test the round trip with a file saved from the older version of office and see if you could open that target.  Unfortunately I can't save a target file at all for this file when handled with the older word filetype.  The new filetype saves it no problem and I can open the target in Word without a problem.  The issue seems to be that you can't handle the target file with Office 2007.  There is clearly a problem as you can open the original source, but it might be related to the fact that you don't need to update the TOC with the source file, but you do with the target. Out of interest can you open this one and then right-click on the TOC and regenerate it?

 toc_problem - #3.zip

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this problem or what I give to the development team to fix since Office 2007 will no longer be supported by Microsoft in a weeks time anyway so they may be reluctant to do anything with any kind of priority.  Also resurrecting the old Word filetype is not the answer here because it will not handle this file anyway.  I can only handle this test file properly when I use the new word filetype and I then have no problem with the target file since I'm using a more recent version of office to open the target file.

I'm going to pass this over to the support team anyway with a description of the problem and they will discuss with development.

Thanks for your help so far.

Louis La Bonté said:

To solve the Word 2007 compatibility problem, couldn't you just reintroduce in Trados 2017 the secondary .docx file type that existed in Trados 2015?

I've mentioned this several times now.  I cannot handle this file with the secondary DOCX filetype in 2015 at all.  There is an error generating the target.  So reintroducing this would not help.

The solution is to resolve any bugs in the new one, not waste time reintroducing something that will then need fixing anyway.  But as I mentioned, if the problem is only caused by opening the file in Office 2007 then I don't know how much priority it will be given since that is a version which will no longer be supported by Microsoft in a weeks time.