I just did a few tests. If you add a text to the essential graphics panel, everything still works as expected. However, if you start using master properties (i.e. use the text from the essential graphics panel as precomp in another comp and then change the text via master property) this is in deed not supported. The reason is that Text2Spreadsheet currently only looks at text layers, but not at precomp layers that might contain master properties.
It is not trivial to add this, but I added it to my list of feature requests and will definitely consider this for future updates.
It may have been adressed before: The script doesn't seem to take Texts from Essential Graphics Panel. Iam working on complex projects and have my Textinserts programmed as on Essential Graphics Template. I hoped that I could extract all texts with that script, but I only got the few texts that I had as normal text layers. Great Script and one great idea! But not for my use case (if im not missing something completely).
yes, the spreadsheets are encoded as UTF-8, so will work with any characters. We tested with Japanese letters and I am very confident that Hebrew will also work. To be 100% sure, please experiment with the trial version before you purchase.
In terms of the ordering on the exported csv file, do I have to manually order the numbers in the layer comments field? Or is there a simpler way to go about this? I am getting spreadsheets with titles seemingly scattered all over the place which makes the translation workflow more difficult.
You can change the order right in the spreadsheet. Just make sure you move the IDs in the spreadsheet together with the texts that they belong to.
Example: If you have a spreadsheet
1,my first text
2,my second text
3,my third text
and you want the second text to be the very first, just change it to
2,my second text
1,my first text
3,my third text
and the import should still work fine with this reordered spreadsheet. In other words, it is not necessary that the numbers in the spreadsheet stay sorted. Best think of the numbers as names or IDs of each text, their order does not matter.
In terms of the ordering on the exported csv file, do I have to manually order the numbers in the layer comments field? Or is there a simpler way to go about this? I am getting spreadsheets with titles seemingly scattered all over the place which makes the translation workflow more difficult.
I am using Text2spreasheet to help automate creating language versions of some of our motion graphics and everything is working great for Spanish and French. I have hit a snag with Arabic.
Is there a way to use Text2spreadsheet with Arabic?
I have "Arabic Text" which would let me do it one line at a time(which defeats the automation speed gains I am after)
Is there a way for you to work with Salahuddin Taha (Arabic text's author) and update text2spreadsheet to paste Arabic text properly?
I am buying massive amounts of food for all involved.
I am using Text2spreasheet to help automate creating language versions of some of our motion graphics and everything is working great for Spanish and French. I have hit a snag with Arabic.
Is there a way to use Text2spreadsheet with Arabic?
I have "Arabic Text" which would let me do it one line at a time(which defeats the automation speed gains I am after)
Is there a way for you to work with Salahuddin Taha (Arabic text's author) and update text2spreadsheet to paste Arabic text properly?
I am buying massive amounts of food for all involved.
I have tried switching the engine but the text is imported just as before. All screwed up and backwards. Switching the preference lets you type and create new Arabic text but copy and pasting does not work. The only way I can reliably insert Arabic into any AE project is through the older script. My network of Arabic speaking motion graphic artists is 0 so I don't know any other work arounds to date. Even using the other script is a multi step process for any piece of text. This time adds up when considering a lengthy mograph piece. The goal is to have Text to Spreadsheet automate the massive global swap, and then fine tuning can happen to re-arrange any line breaks or resize the new Arabic words to fit any given frame.
I know a reply of "it does not work" does not help. I was just hoping to see if this had come up before. The amount of variables does not help either. Is Mac OS the problem, AE, how AE handles text? There is some magic in "Arabic Text" that if combined with your script that would be able to insert the Arabic correctly I am just too stupid to know how to make it work seamlessly. Arabic text and AE has always been VERY buggy and inconsistent. Just selecting a proper Arabic font does not always stick so there are some gremlins deep deep in that code somewhere that need fixing too.
Thanks for the lightning quick response. Also for all of the hard work on your plugins. They are wonderful.
thank you very much for the feedback! This is actually the first request I got about Arabic Text support. Not sure if that means that there is a working solution out there or simply nobody else tried to use Text2Spreadsheet for that, yet.
I've put your explanations now on my list of feature requests and I cannot promise anything, but the next time I start working on an update for Text2Spreadsheet, I will look into that and see if/what I can do. However, I have lots of things on my agenda list and I have no timeline, when the next update for Text2Spreadsheet will come.
I have tried switching the engine but the text is imported just as before. All screwed up and backwards. Switching the preference lets you type and create new Arabic text but copy and pasting does not work. The only way I can reliably insert Arabic into any AE project is through the older script. My network of Arabic speaking motion graphic artists is 0 so I don't know any other work arounds to date. Even using the other script is a multi step process for any piece of text. This time adds up when considering a lengthy mograph piece. The goal is to have Text to Spreadsheet automate the massive global swap, and then fine tuning can happen to re-arrange any line breaks or resize the new Arabic words to fit any given frame.
I know a reply of "it does not work" does not help. I was just hoping to see if this had come up before. The amount of variables does not help either. Is Mac OS the problem, AE, how AE handles text? There is some magic in "Arabic Text" that if combined with your script that would be able to insert the Arabic correctly I am just too stupid to know how to make it work seamlessly. Arabic text and AE has always been VERY buggy and inconsistent. Just selecting a proper Arabic font does not always stick so there are some gremlins deep deep in that code somewhere that need fixing too.
Thanks for the lightning quick response. Also for all of the hard work on your plugins. They are wonderful.
J'avais une petite question concernant la mise en forme de texte depuis le fichier excel directement, est-il possible de faire de la mise en forme directement dans le fichier excel, comme un texte en gras.
changing formats (like bold) in the excel file will not change the format in the Ae project. This is technically not possible, since scripts cannot set formatting of inidividual parts of a text. That's a limitation of the Ae scripting engine and if Adobe decides to add this functionality in the future, we will consider updating Text2Spreadsheet to make this possible.
J'avais une petite question concernant la mise en forme de texte depuis le fichier excel directement, est-il possible de faire de la mise en forme directement dans le fichier excel, comme un texte en gras.
this is a very interesting feature request and definitely sounds feasible. I've put it on my list of feature requests now. However, we are very busy with lots of different projects so I cannot promise and and when this will be implemented.
this is a very interesting feature request and definitely sounds feasible. I've put it on my list of feature requests now. However, we are very busy with lots of different projects so I cannot promise and and when this will be implemented.
Thank you so much for taking the time to add my request to the Text2Spreadsheet development queue. I have a solution that will work for now but I am excited to know that in the future this functionality might be included in a refreshed script. I am more than willing to pay for an upgrade. I will also make sure we purchase the licenses necessary to roll it out across our team so that we can all work smarter and not harder.
Spreadsheets will never be sexy but god are they useful! Thank you again for creating such useful tools for designers like me who have not figured out how to write elegant code yet.
thank you very much for the feedback! This is actually the first request I got about Arabic Text support. Not sure if that means that there is a working solution out there or simply nobody else tried to use Text2Spreadsheet for that, yet.
I've put your explanations now on my list of feature requests and I cannot promise anything, but the next time I start working on an update for Text2Spreadsheet, I will look into that and see if/what I can do. However, I have lots of things on my agenda list and I have no timeline, when the next update for Text2Spreadsheet will come.
I have a question that may be a feature request as i cannot see a way to do this.
In testing the spreadsheet generation, i indecently ended up making new id's overtime so the numbers got higher and higher. Is there away of starting fresh from 1. I want a clean run of numbers for the spreadsheet i give to my client. I had to do a few tests to clear out trailing spaces and also noticed some issues that meant changing how the text was set up. I'd love to now just make a new spreadsheet with the numbers starting from 1.
Alternatively I'm not sure if there is a way to mass remove comments from layers in after effects instead.
in the export options of Text2Spreadsheet you can choose to preserve IDs if a text already has an ID. That way, new exports should only add new IDs if you actually added new texts to the project.
I really hesitate to offer an option to start fresh, because I fear people will not think about the consequences. Say you export some file spreadsheedV1.csv and save your project as projectV1.aep. Then you change something in the project, export with fresh IDs to a file spreadsheetV2.csv and save your project as projectV2.aep. If in V2 the IDs are not the same (say V1 used IDs 1...50, so V2 starts with 51), then any attempt to import projectV1.csv into projectV2.aep will result in a meaningful error message - none of the texts in the spreadsheet belong to this project. But if I use the same IDs, there will be no error. Even worse: Say the only change you did in V2 is you deleted the text layer with ID 48. Then all texts with IDs
1...47 are correct but what was ID 49 in V1 is now ID 48 in V2. So at first sight it looks like the import worked, no error, almost all comps look 100% correct but a few text layers (namely 48 and 49) simply use the wrong texts.
In other words: I make sure Text2Spreadsheet does not allow you to mess things up. I see that it looks cleaner to have IDs start at 1. But think of this as a safety mechanisms: spreadsheets starting with higher numbers indicate that you had previous exports of the project and that importing this file will (and should!) not work with previous versions of the project.
Think of the IDs not as as a simple numbering, but as truly unique names. Also when you talk to your clients, it is better when you can say "take a look at text 108" than saying "take a look at the text that was 49 in the first export and 48 in the second one".
I have a question that may be a feature request as i cannot see a way to do this.
In testing the spreadsheet generation, i indecently ended up making new id's overtime so the numbers got higher and higher. Is there away of starting fresh from 1. I want a clean run of numbers for the spreadsheet i give to my client. I had to do a few tests to clear out trailing spaces and also noticed some issues that meant changing how the text was set up. I'd love to now just make a new spreadsheet with the numbers starting from 1.
Alternatively I'm not sure if there is a way to mass remove comments from layers in after effects instead.
Update: I just saw that someone already asked this in July 2019. Sorry, should have read the other comments first, before posting this. ---------------------------------------------------- Over the years, Text2Spreadsheet has become very important for our workflow.
Now, another feature of AE that we use a lot are "essential properties".
Create a template comp, for let's say an animated label.
Add source text of the text layer to essential graphics
Place this template comp in another composition
Change the the text via essential properties
Repeat this for many new appearances of this template label
If you export with the Text2Spreadsheet, it only exports the text of the original label template, but not all its appearances. Which makes sense as the script probably only looks at the source text property of text layers, and the essential property is not on a text layer, but on a composition.
Is there any chance that it will be possible in the future to include texts that are in the essential property? If not, than we will have to find another way to get these texts in a spreadsheet. Any ideas here are also welcome.
this is a very good feature request, and actually already on my list of feature requests that I will consider for the next update.
In the mean time: My upcoming tool Automation Blocks is currently in private beta testing phase. It also has tools to import and export texts from Ae to a spreadsheet and works with essential properties. If you want to join the beta, please send me an email to [email protected]
Update: I just saw that someone already asked this in July 2019. Sorry, should have read the other comments first, before posting this. ---------------------------------------------------- Over the years, Text2Spreadsheet has become very important for our workflow.
Now, another feature of AE that we use a lot are "essential properties".
Create a template comp, for let's say an animated label.
Add source text of the text layer to essential graphics
Place this template comp in another composition
Change the the text via essential properties
Repeat this for many new appearances of this template label
If you export with the Text2Spreadsheet, it only exports the text of the original label template, but not all its appearances. Which makes sense as the script probably only looks at the source text property of text layers, and the essential property is not on a text layer, but on a composition.
Is there any chance that it will be possible in the future to include texts that are in the essential property? If not, than we will have to find another way to get these texts in a spreadsheet. Any ideas here are also welcome.
I have a lot of videos to process, and for each of them export texts, and then import them back translated.
I d like to know if i could use your script to mass export texts, and then upload them back in AE with the help of a Python script for instance, instead of doing this manually.
some of our tools have scripting APIs such that they can be used by other scripts, but Text2Spreadsheet is not one of them, unfortunately. Therefore, you can only use it manually.
I have a lot of videos to process, and for each of them export texts, and then import them back translated.
I d like to know if i could use your script to mass export texts, and then upload them back in AE with the help of a Python script for instance, instead of doing this manually.
Hello. I have been using the plug in to translate educational videos and it has been working very well. But this week an error appeared that I cannot solve: I have already generated the spreadsheet and performed the translation, the problem is when I import the spreadsheet into After Effects again, it gives me the following error message: Error: XML error in line 156 - Entity parsing error.
I checked the XML with Visual Studio Code, and on line 156 there doesn't seem to be any error. I did a test by modifying the content of the line and when I load the spreadsheet into After Effects again, it gives me the same error but on another line. And so, the problem continues.
Since I haven't had problems with other After projects, I'm starting to suspect it may be a problem with the project? Thanks for your help.
Does it work if you export the file as .csv instead of .xml in your spreadsheet application? If this does not help, could you please open a support ticket and attach both your After Effects project (no footage needed, just the aep) and the spreadsheet?
Hello. I have been using the plug in to translate educational videos and it has been working very well. But this week an error appeared that I cannot solve: I have already generated the spreadsheet and performed the translation, the problem is when I import the spreadsheet into After Effects again, it gives me the following error message: Error: XML error in line 156 - Entity parsing error.
I checked the XML with Visual Studio Code, and on line 156 there doesn't seem to be any error. I did a test by modifying the content of the line and when I load the spreadsheet into After Effects again, it gives me the same error but on another line. And so, the problem continues.
Since I haven't had problems with other After projects, I'm starting to suspect it may be a problem with the project? Thanks for your help.
1. script would stage current project status
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Over the years, Text2Spreadsheet has become very important for our workflow.
If not, than we will have to find another way to get these texts in a spreadsheet. Any ideas here are also welcome.