You may already have versions of your project in different languages. The question is, can you synchronize these projects? The answer is yes as long as the structure and topic IDs are identical – if they are then Project Synch has a special function that will turn the two projects into siblings.
About matching project siblings:
Projects are synchronized using the hidden internal numerical IDs of your topics and the topic captions in the Table of Contents (TOC). Each topic and each topic caption has a unique internal numerical ID that is assigned when the topic is created and it is normally never changed – not even if you change the Topic ID. It is part of the topic forever, until it is deleted. These IDs are not editable and not visible to the user.
Matching project siblings are projects with identical internal numerical IDs for all topics and all TOC entries. Only matching project pairs can be synchronized directly with the normal Project Synch settings.
In the case of a translated version this is only the case if you created the translated version by making a copy of the original project and then translated its text. If you built the translated version from scratch the internal numerical IDs may not match and you will have a problem. You can correct this with the Compare by Topic ID option.
Synchronizing existing projects that are not matching siblings
If the internal IDs of your projects do not match you need to use the Compare by Topic ID option the first time you compare. Project Synch will then synchronize the internal numerical IDs of the two projects. After this you can synchronize the projects normally.
1.Make absolutely sure that the structure and topic IDs of the two versions of your project match. Then save both projects in the same format (single-file compressed or uncompressed XML) and open the original version.
2.Select Synchronize in Project > Tools and click on the Compare tab.
3.Choose the translated project in the Select OLD sibling... field, then activate the Compare TOC by Topic ID option. You will be warned that this is only for special purposes.
4.Set your other options and synchronize the two projects.
You only need to do this once. After this the internal numerical IDs are synchronized and the two projects are real siblings that can be synchronized normally.
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