Preview a document and select text to action

Preview lets you open a document straight in your browser, formatted, without downloading a file. Inside a project’s preview, you can also highlight a short passage and turn it directly into a comment, a custom instruction, or a translation rule, without leaving the document to go find the right settings page.

Opening a preview

Every document row, in a workspace’s Documents list and inside a project’s source documents, has a Preview button next to it. Click it and the document opens in a panel over the page.

This is different from Download, which saves the file to your computer. Preview shows you the content in place, so it’s the faster way to check what a document says before deciding whether you need it at all.

What you’ll see

Preview formats the document based on its file type:

• Markdown (.md) renders like a formatted document, with headings, lists, and emphasis, not as raw text with # and * characters showing.
• HTML (.html) renders visually inside the panel, but with scripts disabled. This keeps an uploaded HTML file from running code or reaching the rest of the page, even if the file itself isn’t trustworthy.
• Anything else (plain text and other formats) shows as plain text, exactly as written.

If a preview fails to load, the panel shows an error rather than staying blank. Try again, and if it keeps failing, the document may not have finished uploading.

Select text to action

Inside a project’s document preview, a Select Text to Action button appears in the panel header. It isn’t available for documents that aren’t filed under a project yet (there’s nothing for a comment or rule to be scoped to), and it isn’t available while previewing an HTML file, since text inside that sandboxed view can’t be read back out.

To use it:

1. Click Select Text to Action. The preview gets a highlighted border to show selection mode is on.

2. Highlight a passage in the document, up to 300 characters. A tooltip near your selection shows how many characters you’ve selected. Go over the limit and the tooltip turns red with a reminder to shorten it; your selection stays visible so you can adjust it rather than starting over.

3. Once your selection is 1-300 characters, click Text Selected to open the action dialog.

4. Choose what you want to do with the passage:

   Action	What it does
   Comment	Attaches a note to that passage for the team, along with the text you write in the note field.
   Custom instruction	Attaches an instruction for how that passage should be handled, along with the text you write in the note field.
   Phrase rule (preserve exactly)	Adds the highlighted phrase itself as a project phrase rule telling the pipeline to keep it exactly as written. No note needed, the selected phrase is the rule.
   Untranslated-text rule (leave as-is)	Adds the highlighted phrase as a rule telling the pipeline to leave it untranslated. No note needed, for the same reason.

5. For a comment or custom instruction, add your note, then click Save. For either rule type, click Save directly.

A phrase rule or untranslated-text rule created this way shows up right away in the project’s Phrase rules list. A comment or custom instruction saves against that document and passage, for the pipeline and your team to draw on.

Click Cancel Selection at any point to clear your current selection and turn selection mode off without saving anything. Closing the preview does the same.

Related

• Workspaces, projects and teams, for what a project’s documents and translation rules are and how they relate to the workspace