XLSX, XLSM, XLTX, and XLTM are spreadsheet file formats used by Microsoft Excel; they can also be read by and edited in other compatible programs such as LibreOffice and Google Docs.

All source strings and translations are in the same file with these formats, which differs from the usual source and language file structure in Transifex. When you upload a spreadsheet file with pre-existing translations, Transifex will add the source strings and translations to the database. Similarly, when you download the file from Transifex, translations from all languages will be in it.

Spreadsheets used for localization typically organize their languages and strings in columns. Each column represents one language, with the header row of the column specifying the language. And below that, you have the strings/translations for that language.

For example:

You can use the languages' names or ISO codes as values for the header/language row.

Transifex is pretty forgiving about how you format your spreadsheet file. If you have rows above the languages row – for example, with instructions for your translators – Transifex will skip them.

So this file, for example, would still be compatible with Transifex:

And if your file has more than one sheet in it, and your strings aren’t in the first sheet, Transifex will still try to find them.

In general, the Excel parser will look for your strings this way:

By default, Transifex does not allow duplicate strings in Excel sheets unless you distinguish each phrase with a unique context. You can have columns between the language columns for context purposes. You can name such a column in any way you want, but a good convention is to name it Context.

Transifex won't treat it as a translatable string. The contents of the column are added as developer comments for the phrase and shown in the Editor to Translators. Each note can have up to 1,000 characters.

Below is an example where English is the source language, and the Context column is present.

To set the value of a key in an XLSX source file, you need to create a new column in your source file named "key". This "key" column should be next to (before or after) the source language column or next to (before or after) the "context" column.

The "key" column will get uploaded into the key field in Transifex. The key is helpful in filtering in the visual context tool and Transifex Web Editor.

Below is an example where English is the source language, and the "key" column is present.

Version #1:

Version #2:

You can define character limits for the translations by adding this numerical limit in a separate column in your XLSX file.

Character limits must be added to a column named "Character limit". The name of this column is case-insensitive and will consider spaces, dashes, and underscores. As an example, the following column names are acceptable:

This column is not required, so Transifex will still parse your file if you don't include this.

You can add tags to strings directly in your XLSX file and then update your strings in Transifex via a simple upload using a dedicated column named "Tags".

The structure of your source file, in this case, will look like this:

For any tag changes happening in Transifex (new tags are added, existing tags are removed), you can request the latest version of the XLSX content from Transifex, and the updated tags will be exported as well.

If you want to get the date of the latest translation applied to your strings whenever you request the XLSX file from Transifex, then all you need to do is to ensure that for every target language, there is an extra column called "modified".

So, before you upload your XLSX source file to Transifex, make sure you follow the format below:

Example Format:

After your strings are translated in Transifex, when you request the file back, these columns will contain the date of the last translation applied to each of the strings included in your file for every target language.

The following column names are acceptable:

You can use the context column to differentiate between the same source phrases, such as those that should be translated differently. For example, if you have the word "Hello" twice in your file (the same key is used for both phrases), and you want to allow translators to translate it differently in each case, you should provide a different context for each one of the strings above to differentiate.

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If you have duplicate English phrases and both "key" and "Context" are the same, Transifex will complain and ask you to fix the error.

In Transifex, each project has a set of target languages it gets translated to. If there are any differences between the languages in the uploaded file and the project, Transifex will try to deal with this as gracefully as possible.

Here's a look at a few possible scenarios:

If you are unhappy with the order in which the languages appear or with the style of the extra columns, you can edit the file offline to make it look as you want and upload it again as a source file.

If you upload a file through the Update Source File function in Transifex, all strings in the file will be extracted from the spreadsheet. This means both source strings and translations will be updated inside Transifex. If you upload the file through the Upload File function, only strings from the selected language will be uploaded to Transifex. This gives you more control over which languages get updated.

When you download a file, however, all available translations from all languages will be included in the downloaded file. You can still choose to download only reviewed strings when downloading, in which case, only the reviewed translations will be used.

Uploading multiple spreadsheet files into Transifex can be a time-consuming task; you can save time by merging them into a single file with multiple sheets and uploading this file once rather than uploading them one by one.

Please be sure to consider the following points when formatting your file:

When using a structured Excel format, make sure that the column containing all the strings in the source language is present in all the sheets of your Excel file. If the source language is missing in any of the sheets, the uploading process will be interrupted, and the platform will display an error message. The error message will indicate the source language of the project and the name of the sheet in which it was not found.

When working with a structured Excel format, it's important to ensure that each language column appears only once per sheet. You can have the same language column in multiple sheets, but it should be unique to each sheet. If a language column is listed more than once in the same sheet, an error message will appear; the error message will display the language that appears more than once in the sheet, as well as the name of the sheet in question.
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It is important to ensure that all strings are unique. If you have multiple strings with the same text, it is recommended to differentiate them by adding additional context. If you have a duplicated string, you will receive an error message that includes the text of the string and the name of the sheet where the duplication is occurring.