How to add a custom segmentation rule for soft returns in the file type settings for MS Office file types in Trados Studio

You want to add a custom segmentation rule for soft returns, but do not want to modify the segmentation rules of your translation memory(ies).

In case of MS Office file types you can modify the corresponding file type settings in order for your source files to be segmented after soft returns. You can do this by relying on the examples below.

Let's say you have a Word document, with a soft return in a heading and a paragraph

1. Before you open it in Trados Studio, go to File > Options > File Types > Microsoft Word 2007-2019 > Embedded content, and activate the option Enable embedded content processing

2. Click on Add... to the right of Document structure information , and select the document structures the soft return is part of. As in the example above these are a heading and a paragraph, these are the structures I added. But in case of your document(s) you may need to add different ones (e.g. Header or footer, Comment, Footnote, etc.)



3. Click on Add... next to Tag definition rules, select Placeholder under Tag Type and add "\n" (backslash n) under Start Tag, as you can see in the screenshot below: 



After confirming the settings, our sample file should be segmented as can be seen below: 



NOTE: If you are using a custom project template, you need to change the settings detailed above in that template. You can edit it under File > Setup > Project templates.

In case you do want to change the segmentation rules in your translation memory, please see: How to create a segmentation rule for soft return in a Language Resource Template in Trados Studio.