[Fix] Trados Error: The file you are opening does not contain any bilingual segments

This problem occasionally happens when you are trying to open and work with Word files in SDL Trados Studio 2011/2014. After you select your file, Trados displays an error window, with either “The file you are opening does not contain any bilingual segments” or “The file contains “tw4winMark” style used to mark up bilingual documents”.

Most of the time, you will be able to fix the issue by checking the “Process files with tw4winMark style” option in Trados’ options.

To do this, go to Options > File Types > Microsoft Word 2000-2003 (or Microsoft Word 2007-2013) > Common and check “Process files with tw4winMark style” as on the picture below. Don’t forget to apply the setting for both Word 2000-2003 and Word 2007-2013.

Trados word error

If the setting above doesn’t work…

Some users reported that they still had the issue after checking the option above. In this case, and as a last resort measure, save your Word file with the .rtf extension and you should be able to work with it. Please note, however, that formatting of the original document may be altered, so do it with caution.