How to open multiple SDLXLIFF files at once in Trados Studio

A useful tip about working in Trados Studio

You can open many SDLXLIFF files at once in Trados Studio. To do this, in the Files mode, select the Include subfolders checkbox on the left.

Then, in the file list on the right, select several files by holding down the Shift key or select all the files in the package at once by pressing Ctrl + A, then right-click and select Open For Translation (or Open For Review, depending on what you are going to do) from the drop-down menu.

In this case, all segments of all the open files will be displayed as one long file; that is, as if you have one huge document open.

However, if you press Ctrl + H to open the Find and Replace window to perform some massive replacement, Trados Studio sometimes gets angry and displays the following traditionally uninformative message:

InvalidArgument=Value of '1' is not valid for 'index'.

Parameter name: index

It is not clear what exactly the program does not like. The important thing is that this message is displayed when you try to open the autoreplace dialog box.

The solution is simple: you need to take advantage of the fact that the replacement window and the search window are actually different tabs on the same window, but different commands call them. First, open the search window by pressing Ctrl + F. There are usually no problems at this point. After that, you just need to select the second tab, Replace.

It’s interesting that this second tab may not even appear after you open the search window. But it appears if you press Ctrl + Tab.