Translation overview

Follow these instructions to translate a spreadsheet to another language while you convert it to a web calculator with SpreadsheetConverter. 

The SpreadsheetConverter add-in is currently only available in English, but you can use it to convert spreadsheets in any left-to-right language including Greek and Russian. 

The converted web pages contain small amounts of standard texts generated by the converter, e.g. warning messages and button labels. You can translate all these using the text customization feature.

Translation of the converted web page

Considerations when going global

When you attempt to use a calculator or form in other countries, some things may require particular attention:

  • Try to keep the length of the translated text approximately the same as the length of the original text, so that the translation fits the width of the corresponding column or button.
  • There are numerous differences in how you format a date, time, number or address. Read more about how you should Design the web page for all your visitors.

Translation checklist

To create an online spreadsheet that is completely in a non-English language, e.g. Swedish, you need to do the following with the original spreadsheet in Excel, before you convert it:

  • Translate the spreadsheet’s file name to Swedish.
  • Translate the tab names in the spreadsheet to Swedish.
  • Translate the text in all the cells of all the worksheets to Swedish, including any text generated by formulas, functions (like TEXT). Note that Excel generates some localized text strings, most notably the names of weekdays and months in the Long Date format, in the currently selected Windows language. You must change the regional settings in Windows to correct this – read more below.
  • Translate the in-cell texts used by SpreadsheetConverter widgets. The Action buttons take their label from the cell they’re in, and the File Attachment widget takes its text prompt from its cell. Note that some texts may have external requirements, e.g. an e-mail message subject, a survey response or a hidden flag that the recipient expects to be in English at all times. 
  • Translate the text in the SpreadsheetConverter widget settings, e.g. the text for each option in a Dropdown menu.
  • Customize the standard texts used by SpreadsheetConverter using the Customize texts settings for the spreadsheet, replacing each English text with its Swedish translation.
  • Translate the text generated by other Excel add-ins.
  • Translate the Page title in the Workbook settings to Swedish.
  • Ensure that all links point to pages in the same language. Example: If the original English calculator has a link to www.example.com/en/calc_help.htm, you need to translate this page as www.example.com/sv/calc_help.htm and change the links in the Swedish calculator to point to this page instead.
  • Ensure that any web pages used for the After successful submit, After failed submit and After cancel in the wizard options in the Submit settings are translated into Swedish and properly linked to from any Swedish form or calculator.
  • Ensure that forms submitted in Swedish are properly processed after submission, e.g. that they are sent to the an e-mail address where people speak Swedish, or stored properly in a database of responses in Swedish.
  • Ensure that the visitor tracking settings are adjusted for the language. You probably want to maintain separate visitor and conversion statistics for each language, and so you should use different settings for your visitor tracking, website statistics, conversion counters, advertising metrics etc.

Regional settings

Excel and SpreadsheetConverter obey the current regional settings in your Windows environment. Sweden uses ISO-standard yyyy-mm-dd dates, decimal comma and space as the thousands separator. To generate a web page with Swedish date and number formatting and a 24-hour clock, you must change the Windows region setting to Sweden before the conversion.