Tools Included with Help & Manual > The Project Synchronization Tool

If you work within its capabilities, remembering that it cannot be used to highlight changes in topic text, Project Synch should work very reliably. However, you may still encounter some problems in certain situations, particularly if you don't follow the instructions.

Always create backups before synchronizing

Since project synch automatically modifies your translated version of the project you should always create backups before synchronizing. This is simply good security policy, and it is particularly important if you are synchronizing existing translations that were not created with the help of project synch (see below). Then you can re-insert text from the backup to

Comparisons with changes in both projects:

If both projects contain changes the changes in the "translated" version will be deleted!

Please always remember that this function is only for updating translated versions to reflect changes made in the original project. It is assumed that the translator does not make any structural changes to the project. If the translator makes structural changes like adding new topics, moving or deleting topics etc. these changes will be deleted when you synchronize the translated project with the master!

Again: The translator is not allowed to make any structural changes to the project or to alter anything in the Project Properties or Topic Options (except translation of the keywords). Changes made by the translator will probably be deleted during synchronization and may also cause problems!

This is also why you cannot use this function to synchronize two different versions in the same language with changes made in both versions! If you do, the changes made in the second version (the "translation") will all be deleted when you synchronize!

Comparisons with existing translations:

Can you compare an existing translation with the original master project?

You can do this even if the language pair was not created with the Project Synch tool. However, you may experience a few problems during the first synchronization that you will need to tidy up.

•	When you perform the synchronization you must specify the "synchronize changes since" date manually.

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If the translator has already manually created "new" topics to reflect updates in the original project these will have their own IDs and will not be automatically synchronized. Depending on how the project is structured some "new" topics may be created and existing topics may be identified as "deleted" and moved to the DELETED TOPICS folder in the Invisible Topics section. If this happens you will need to make some manual corrections, taking the text you need either from the deleted topics folder or from your backup.

•	Otherwise you should not have any problems. Genuinely new topics will be inserted, deleted topics will be removed and topics that have changed since the specified date will be flagged as changed.

For full details see Synching existing projects.