Trados Studio displays the following error message when you try to open an IDML or MIF file:

The selected IDML/MIF file was created by an unsupported version of Adobe InDesign and will not be processed.

Important note

Updating Trados Studio to the newest version by installing the latest cumulative update or service pack may resolve the issue. Cumulative updates or service packs for the latest version of Trados Studio often also introduce compatibility with recent versions of Adobe file formats. If it does not, refer to the workarounds below.

 

If you are using Trados Studio 2014 SP2 or newer

Trados Studio 2014 SP2 or higher can open IDML files even if the file version of Adobe InDesign is higher than the version that was current at the release of Trados Studio. Depending on how you open the problematic file, follow below instructions.
 

When creating a project

Note: The same steps may be used for Adobe FrameMaker documents.

IMPORTANT: If you are using the Default project template, you can make the necessary changes under File > Options > File Types before creating your project. If you are using a custom template, you need to edit the template under File > Setup > Project Templates, and continue with the steps below.

1. Click File Types.
2. Go to File Types > Adobe InDesign CS4-CC IDML > Common.
3. Enable the option Process unsupported file versions and confirm.
4. Back in the Project Files step, mark all InDesign files you added to the project.
5. Right-click one of the files and select Change File Usage.
6. Change file usage to Translatable and confirm.

You should now be able to continue creating the project.
 

When translating a single document

1. Go to File > Options > File Types > Adobe InDesign CS4-CC IDML > Common.
2. Enable the option Process unsupported file versions and confirm.
3. Re-Open the idml file for translation.

 

When adding files to an existing project

1. Go to Project Settings > File Types > Adobe InDesign CS4-CC IDML > Common.
2. Activate option Process unsupported file versions.
3. Add files to project.

 

If you are using Trados Studio 2014 SP1 or earlier

Change version of the IDML to enable Studio to recognize the IDML

NOTE: The following workaround requires changing information in the IDML files. It may cause you to lose some InDesign CC features from your files as Studio does not support these features yet. After the forward and backward conversion, check your files for any issues.
 

Pre-requisites

To retrieve the required information from the IDML file, make sure you:

• Have WinZip, WinRAR or a similar (de-)compressing tool installed on your computer.
• Deactivate the option Hide file extensions for known file types for your operating system (see KB article #3330 for instructions).
• Have a text editor installed, for example Notepad. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > Notepad to access Notepad.

To change the version of the IDML:

1. Close Adobe InDesign on your computer.
2. Browse to your IDML document.
3. Highlight the document with one mouse click then press [F2].
4. Rename the file type extension *.idml to *.zip and press Enter.
5. Extract the renamed document with either WinZip or WinRar to a folder.
6. Open your text editor and click on File > Open.
7. Browse to the extracted folder and open the file designmap.xml in your text editor.
8. Search for find the field that looks like this: product="8.1(420)", product="11.0(72)" or similar (number depends on InDesign version used to create document)
9. Change the line to product = "10.1(71) " (if you are using Studio version 11.1.4095.0) or product = "9.2(70)" (for earlier versions). This is the highest version that the respective version of Studio 2014 SP1 can recognize.
10. Save the changes and close the editor again.
11. Re-zip all the files and folders.
12. Change the file extension back from *.zip to *.idml.
13. Now open the file in Studio 2014.

Trados Studio shows this error message because the original file was created in an Adobe InDesign CC or Adobe InDesign CS6 8.1 version which your version of Trados Studio may not support yet. Adobe InDesign CC file types are generally supported starting with Trados Studio 2014. However, newer InDesign versions may also change the IDML file format, which in turn may break the compatibility with Trados Studio. In order to set the user's expectations, the error is shown. However, you can work around this message as described in this article.