Convert an XLIFF file to Excel
There are two spreadsheets here and they answer different questions. The bilingual spreadsheet is ID, Source and Target, one row per segment in document order — the thing you send when someone just needs to read the translation. The review workbook is twelve columns wide, carries the QA and AI findings, and has a real Excel dropdown in the Reviewer decision column, so it can be filled in and read back.
Both are built by your browser from the file you drop below. Nothing is uploaded, and the bilingual file itself is never overwritten by the conversion.
The file opens in the editor. Exports → Bilingual spreadsheet (.xlsx) produces the three-column sheet; Exports → Review workbook (.xlsx) produces the reviewable one.
When you need this
The reviewer is a subject-matter expert at the client, not a linguist with a CAT seat. They have Excel and they have opinions, and their edits otherwise arrive as tracked changes in a Word file you have to re-key. A review workbook gives them a decision column and gives you a machine-readable answer.
The same export serves an LQA sample, a terminology argument you want to settle in a pivot table, and the archive copy a client asks for at project close.
Steps
- Open the bilingual file. Drop the XLIFF, SDLXLIFF or MQXLIFF file on the zone above. It is parsed by a worker in this browser tab and is not uploaded anywhere.
- Pick the sheet you need. The bilingual spreadsheet is three columns — ID, Source, Target — for reading. The review workbook adds state, QA, AI and reviewer columns, and can be read back in.
- Export the spreadsheet. Choose Exports then Bilingual spreadsheet (.xlsx), or Exports then Review workbook (.xlsx). The file is built in the browser and downloads immediately.
- Send it to the reviewer. The reviewer types into Suggested fix and picks Accept, Reject or Modify from the dropdown in the Reviewer decision column. Sorting and filtering are safe.
- Read the decisions back. Choose Exports then Import review workbook and pick the returned .xlsx. Rows are matched by ID, and a counter reports accepted, modified, rejected and unmatched.
- Export the real file. Choose Export clean file. The spreadsheet was a review artefact; the bilingual file is still the deliverable, and it comes back byte-identical outside the segments that changed.
What to check afterwards
After the re-import, the number that matters is unmatched. It counts rows whose decision could not land: an edited or cleared ID, a row from another file, or a decision made against a locked segment. Zero unmatched means every decision was applied or deliberately rejected.
Then look at what changed. Accept with a fix sets the target and marks the segment reviewed; Accept with an empty fix only marks it reviewed; Modify with a fix sets the target and leaves it draft, for when the fix still needs a linguist's eye. Reject changes nothing.
Inline tags appear in the cells as their original markup — <g id="1">, not a chip — so a reviewer can see where the formatting sits.
The gotcha
Excel rewrites what people type. A fix that starts with =, +, -
or @ becomes a formula; 1/2 becomes a date; 007 loses its zeros. The cells
we write are text; the ones a reviewer types into are governed by Excel. Tell them to
format the Suggested fix column as Text first, and read the round-tripped values rather
than trusting them.
The other trap is direction. Only the review workbook comes back in; edits made in the bilingual spreadsheet have to be re-keyed by hand. If there is any chance the file will be edited, send the review workbook.