Document import settings

In the Document import settings window, you fine-tune the settings that control how memoQ imports a document. These settings are different for each document type.

To add documents to a project, you can simply drag and drop them at the Translations field. Then memoQ imports them with the default settings, which don't always produce the results you expect. For some document types (such as plain text or XML), the default settings don't even make sense most of the time.

To import a document, memoQ needs a filter configuration to specify how to read / import a document that needs to be translated. When memoQ imports a document, it gets the text out of it, and stores the formatting (and everything else that doesn't need to be translated) in a safe place. The part that is not the text is called a skeleton.

Translation preview does not work for all document formats: You will get a preview if you import Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, XML (through XSLT style sheets, too), WPML XLIFF, multilingual Excel, text, and XML, and - through Language Terminal - InDesign documents.

How to get here

Open a local project.
In Project home tab, choose Translations.
In the Documents ribbon, click the down arrow below the Import icon.
From the menu, choose Import with options.
An Open window appears. Find and select the documents you want to import. Click Open.
The Document import options window appears.
Select the documents where you want to change the settings. At the bottom, click Change filter & configuration.
To change the settings for all documents: In the top left corner, click the empty check box next to the File name header. Then, at the bottom, click the Change filter & configuration link.
The Document import settings window appears.

OR:

The Document import settings window is different for each document type. This screenshot is just an example.

What can you do?

Select a document filter and its configuration

memoQ recognizes the document format from the extension of the file. Still, you may want to use a different filter configuration.

The extension isn't everything: In some cases, it can be misleading. For example, plain-text files often have an extension that's not TXT, and many XML files are called something different from .XML. But sometimes even a .HTML or an .XLIFF file needs to be imported as plain XML.

When memoQ can't choose: Some extensions are unfamiliar for memoQ. In the Document import options window, these files will be marked by an orange lightning bolt. You must choose a filter configuration manually for these documents. In this case - and only in this case - choose the filter and the configuration from the drop-down boxes in the list itself.

From the Filter drop-down box: Choose a different filter configuration. But only if you need to.
From the Filter configuration drop-down box: Choose the filter configuration you need.
The filter configuration needs to be available on your computer.

For online projects: The filter configuration must be available either locally on the computer itself, or on a server that you're connected to. (This is usually a server where you're importing documents into an online project.)

To set up a filter configuration: Either adjust the settings in the Document import settings window, and save the configuration. (To do that, see the next section on this page.) Or, if you have the filter configuration in a file: Open Resource console. Choose Filter configurations. Import the filter configuration.

Click OK.

Reimport source documents that are already in the project: How does memoQ remember the import settings?

The choices in the Filter configuration drop-down box will be slightly different if you use Reimport command from the Translations pane of Project home or in the memoQ online project window.

When you reimport a document, memoQ will create a new major version of the document in the project. To get the translations from the previous version, you need to X-Translate the document.

The reimport will be accurate if memoQ uses the exact same settings as it used when the document was first imported.

Do not read on if you need to reimport the document because you need to change the import settings.

memoQ will remember the filter that was used to import the document, and it will try to remember the filter configuration, too. However, that may not always be easy.

To choose the same configuration as before, look at the choices in the Filter configuration drop-down box next to the document in the list.

If the same configuration still exists, and it has not changed since the last import: memoQ will use this configuration. In the Filter configuration drop-down box, this will be marked with [o] where the letter o means 'Original configuration'.
If the same configuration still exists, but it was changed since the last import: At first, memoQ will choose this configuration. In the Filter configuration drop-down box, this will be marked with [c] where the letter c means 'Changed configuration'.
If the same configuration does not exist anymore: When memoQ imports a document, it stores the filter configuration among the project data. In this case, memoQ will use the stored configuration. In the Filter configuration drop-down box, this will be marked with [s] where the letter s means 'Stored configuration'.

Chaining filters: Running another filter after the first one during import

After a filter processes a document, you can run another one to process the text again.

For example, cells in an Excel file may contain HTML markup. In this case, you can apply the HTML filter to the contents of the cells, turning HTML markup into sensible inline tags.

Or, a plain text filter may contain lines in the 'name=value' form, where the 'name=' part should not be touched. In this case, you can apply a Regex tagger to turn the 'name=' parts into inline tags.

To run another filter after the first one, click the Add cascading filter link below the Filter configuration box. The Add cascading filter window appears.

First filter must return plain text: You cannot specify a second filter if the first filter returns inline tags. You can still use the XML filter as the first filter, but the second filter will fail if the XML filter returns at least one inline tag.

First filter will sometimes pass through whitespace: In some cases, XML- and HTML-based filters (including .DOCX) represent whitespace characters (tabs, newlines) with inline tags. However, if there is a second filter, the first filter will pass on the whitespace characters as they are, and these characters will be replaced with inline tags only after the second filter processed the text.

Regex tagger must be last in chain: If you add a Regex tagger to a filter chain, you cannot add more filters - except for more Regex taggers to tag the document in several different ways.

Once you select the other filter, the Document import settings window changes like this:

doc_import_settings_chaining

The lower part of the window shows the document-specific settings for the filter that is highlighted in orange. To display the document-specific options for the other filter, click its name in the chain. In the above example, the Document import settings window shows the options for the XML filter. To show the options for the Regex tagger, click the Regex tagger link.

Caution: Do not forget to adjust the options of both filters before clicking OK to import the selected documents.

To remove the second filter, click the Remove link. You cannot remove the first filter this way. If you want to change the first filter, click Remove to unchain the filters, and then select another filter from the Filter drop-down box.

When you finish

To confirm the settings, and return to the Document import options window: Click OK.

To return the Document import options window, and not change the filter settings: Click Cancel.

In the Document import options window: Click OK again to start importing the documents.