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Comparing Excel files on a Mac
Thread poster: Charles Ek
Charles Ek
Charles Ek  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 12:59
Member (2009)
Norwegian to English
+ ...
Jun 14, 2011

I have a project involving an Excel workbook in which I'm to change just two columns on a single large worksheet, by substituting my translation of survey responses. This is clearly a situation in which to tread carefully, as messing up the source file could cause big problems for me and for the client.

Checking for inadvertent changes is pretty easy in Word, but Excel offers nothing similar, at least in Microsoft Office for Mac 2008. (I haven't given any serious thought yet to upgr... See more
I have a project involving an Excel workbook in which I'm to change just two columns on a single large worksheet, by substituting my translation of survey responses. This is clearly a situation in which to tread carefully, as messing up the source file could cause big problems for me and for the client.

Checking for inadvertent changes is pretty easy in Word, but Excel offers nothing similar, at least in Microsoft Office for Mac 2008. (I haven't given any serious thought yet to upgrading to the 2011 version for two hundred dollars . . . )

I went hunting and found a very nice solution, a shareware application called ExCompCel, available for download at http://excompcel.sourceforge.net/.

I just ran my first test and it worked like a charm. Note that it's a Java application. Please don't ask me for technical assistance - the only Java I know is what I pour into my cup at the outset of a project, with frequent updates thereafter as needed. ▲ Collapse
 
Joakim Braun
Joakim Braun  Identity Verified
Sweden
Local time: 19:59
German to Swedish
+ ...
Cut'n'paste, or lock columns in Excel Jun 14, 2011

1) If this is plaintext, why not simply copy the relevant columns from Excel, do the translation in Word and paste it back in?

or 2) Lock everything in the spreadsheet but the columns you work on.

(You can also divide the Excel window to show different parts of the spreadsheet, this can be quite useful.)

[Bearbeitet am 2011-06-14 19:30 GMT]
 
Charles Ek
Charles Ek  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 12:59
Member (2009)
Norwegian to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
"Don't trust, verify." :-) Jun 15, 2011

How I make the changes isn't the issue here. I'm using this tool to verify that no unintended changes have occurred. Especially because I use a CAT tool (OmegaT in my case), I want to be very sure that I don't deliver a changed or corrupted version of the source.
 
Dragomir Kovacevic
Dragomir Kovacevic  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 19:59
Italian to Serbian
+ ...
cut out other columns and make TM out of them Jun 15, 2011

first of all, save xls as xlsx.

cut out other columns - the untranslatable ones. use these remaining xlsx columns and produce a TM out of them. how: column per column; each column as source will have its identical target column - just copy source column into target. save these or this file as CSV. use CSV converter to produce a TM in TMX format out of this CSV. here you produced a TM for the untranslatable part. Put this TM into OmegaT's TM folder.

put the gross xlsx fi... See more
first of all, save xls as xlsx.

cut out other columns - the untranslatable ones. use these remaining xlsx columns and produce a TM out of them. how: column per column; each column as source will have its identical target column - just copy source column into target. save these or this file as CSV. use CSV converter to produce a TM in TMX format out of this CSV. here you produced a TM for the untranslatable part. Put this TM into OmegaT's TM folder.

put the gross xlsx file into source folder of OmegaT. Translate. all other lines will be auto-translated by means of the above TM for the untranslatable columns.

save all, compile. you will obtain a complete target file.


Charles Ek wrote:

How I make the changes isn't the issue here. I'm using this tool to verify that no unintended changes have occurred. Especially because I use a CAT tool (OmegaT in my case), I want to be very sure that I don't deliver a changed or corrupted version of the source.


[Edited at 2011-06-16 06:45 GMT] ▲ Collapse
 


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Comparing Excel files on a Mac






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