If the files imports, but the result is not what it should be

There are many possible causes for this, depending on what file format is being imported, and the particular characteristics of the document being imported. It is also possible that a particular file is being imported correctly, but its particular features make the result of the import look unusual. Some examples of things you may notice follow:

• When importing a Word 2007 document:
  • The import finishes but when you open the file in the project you find there is no text.
  • There a lot of tags, or some letters or groups of letters are absent from the imported text, and appear to be replaced by tags:
    • Tags contain formatting information from the original file, things like the font used, the style of the paragraph, graphics, etc. They are what allow Déjà Vu to preserve the formatting of the original document when it exports the translation you have created in the project. Documents that have very complex formatting will result in a lot of tags being added to the project.
      Occasionally, however, a seemingly simple document will appear with a lot of codes when it is imported. This happens because the document contains a lot of unnecessary formatting information, in the sense that removing this formatting would not noticeable change the layout of this document. This can be alleviated with Déjà Vu:
      • With Déjà Vu X2: you can select the option Run CodeZapper when you import Word documents. This opens the document in Word before importing it into DVX2 and runs the well-known CodeZapper macro that simplifies formatting in Word documents while keeping the layout almost intact. Using this option is particularly helpful with documents that contain a lot of unnecessary formatting that is not visible to the naked eye. A good example of the kind of document that benefits from this is a Word document converted from a PDF using OCR technology.
      • With Déjà Vu X3: by default, the Microsoft Office Live filter is used to import Office documents. This filter does a better job than the older filters of simplifying a document's layout without affecting it visually, thus producing a project that has fewer tags.
    • Some Word documents contain Smart Tags in places. These are often not even visible in Word, particularly with the newer versions, but they will be imported by Déjà Vu nonetheless, and they may appear in unexpected places, sometimes causing translatable text to be stored in a tag rather than imported into the translation grid. If your version of Office allows it, you can remove the Smart Tags from a document before importing it. Using Code Zapper can also help get rid of these tags.