Convert a TMX to Excel
Reviewers, clients and terminologists rarely have a CAT tool, but they all have Excel. TM Cleaner reads the TMX and writes cleaned.xlsx: one row per translation unit, with the source, the target, who last changed it and when. Keep every unit, or clean the TM on the way out so the sheet holds only what is worth a reviewer's time.
━━ the problem
Each unit holds one variant per language, with attributes and properties around them. A generic XML import doesn't know which variant is the source, so the pairs don't come out as two columns side by side, and someone rebuilds them by hand.
A segment that starts with =, + or @ turns into a live formula when a careless converter writes it, and control characters pasted from Word are characters an Excel file can't hold. Real TMs contain both.
Duplicates, URLs, tag-only segments and old machine output make a review sheet far longer than it needs to be. Exporting the raw TM hands that work to the reviewer.
━━ how TM Cleaner handles it
Pick “TMX → Excel” and drop the TMX: nothing is removed, and the download has cleaned.xlsx next to the TMX. To clean while you convert, pick “Clean it” instead and switch on “Also export Excel files” under Download files; removed.xlsx then lists every unit that was taken out and why. A tab-separated TSV is one switch away for scripts.
- ✓one row per unit: source, target, translator (changeid) and date (changedate)
- ✓every cell is written as text, so a segment starting with = never becomes a formula
- ✓several targets in one unit share a cell, separated by “ | ”; keep one target language in the import check for a two-column sheet
- ✓reverse the TM first and the source column follows the new direction
- ✓past Excel's 1,048,576-row limit the rows continue on a second sheet
━━ frequently asked
what happens to formatting tags?+
the cell shows the tags' original codes, as in “Click <b>Save</b>”, so a reviewer can see where the formatting sits. the cleaned TMX keeps the real tags.
can I edit the spreadsheet and turn it back into a TMX?+
yes, with Excel to TMX on this site. the first row says source and target rather than language codes, so choose the two languages in the upload form. the translator and date columns come back as properties (<prop type="x-changeid">), not as each unit's own changeid and changedate.
is there a size limit?+
50 MB per upload without an account, 2 GB per file with a free sign-in. the upload is deleted when the export finishes, and the download links work for one hour.
I have an XLIFF file, not a TMX. can I get that into Excel?+
not here: TM Cleaner reads TMX. xliff.ai, terratra's free XLIFF editor, turns an XLIFF, SDLXLIFF or MQXLIFF file into an .xlsx review sheet in your browser, without uploading it, and reads the reviewer's decisions back into the bilingual file.
━━ related pages
free · no account up to 50 MB · files up to 2 GB · try the demo