Check for clean document

This extremely useful command allows you to check whether the document was properly cleaned by SDL Trados (when the Word document was translated directly in Microsoft Word) or Wordfast Classic.

It checks every part of the document for Trados/Wordfast formatting (i.e. text marked with Trados/Wordfast specific styles such as tw4winMark, tw4winError, etc, or with Hidden font attribute) and selects the first found instance (for further formatting, deleting, etc.).

Why to use:

• For some reason, SDL Trados is very inconsistent when it comes to cleaning headers/footers, textboxes, etc.
• When you are batch cleaning a number of files, it's very easy to miss the 'Cleaning error' message (it appears in Translator's Workbench status bar for about a second).
  Show example
  
  
  This error means that formatting around a particular block of text became corrupted, and SDL Trados marks the text with a rather conspicuous green arrow (») . However, it is always possible to overlook such things when you are in a hurry.
• Sometimes even when the document is cleaned, some of the translated text may be marked with the Hidden attribute. This prevents the client from seeing some of the translated text (normally, hidden text is not displayed in Word unless the appropriate option is set under Word Options) - with obvious consequences. Possible causes of this are:
  
  • You have copied hidden text from other parts in the Word document into another segment;
  • You used Trados Concordance dialogue to find similar text and copied the results into the current segment. For some reason, this text may have the Hidden attribute once it is pasted into the document.

Usage:

When you run Check for clean document, it searches the document for Trados/Wordfast specific styles and selects the first match. The appropriate message is also shown in Word's status bar:

If the document contains no Trados/Wordfast formatting, you will see the following notification message: