Translating

Although it has not been initially made as a translation tool (let’s face it, most of us use Google Translate) Excel has several features that allow you to translate table names from one language to another, check the spelling and grammar, and, if possible, replace one of the labels with a synonym. It’s rare for anyone to know that these options exist, or at least never used them, so it is not bad to mention them.

The listed options are in the Review ribbon and are used in a very simple way. First, let’s see how the translation is done. We added a simple sales view table and we will then translate the title and some of its items.

First, click on the “Sales Analysis” heading. Then, in the Review ribbon, we need to select the Translate option. A menu for translation will appear on the right side of the window. In the menu, we first see the word that we have selected, and below it is the combo with the default Translation value. By changing this field of choice, we could choose another service or search for a term on the Bing search engine. Then, in the From field, we select the language from which we translate (SERBIAN), and in the To language language we translate (ENGLISH). Clicking the Insert button will replace the selected term with its translation. This procedure is repeated until we translate all the desired terms.

If we choose a word, for example, “Analysis” and then click on the Thesaurus button, Excel will offer us more synonyms to replace the selected word. By clicking the Spelling button, checking of spelling and grammar is being done. Once again, I will mention the Smart Lookup option. If you select a term, and then click on this button, the panel on the right that opens the search for this term on the Internet will open. Excel suggests related links, and by clicking on some of them, you can get an idea of how to refine the document.