File locations in Wordfast Pro

Wordfast Pro (WFP) saves its program files on your computer and you save user files from WFP to your computer when you create WFP projects, translation memories, glossaries, etc. In this article, we provide an overview of the locations where WFP program files are saved and where we suggest saving WFP user files.

Location of program files

MacOS: everything is contained in the Applications folder

• Macintosh HD:Applications:Wordfast Pro.app
• Right-click > Show package content

Windows:

• 32-bit version: c:\program files (x86)\Wordfast Pro
• 64-bit version: c:\program files\Wordfast Pro
• c:\Users\[username]\.gs4tr.editor\5.19.0_x64 [1]

Default location for projects

MacOS:

• Macintosh HD:Users:[Username]:WordfastPro:Projects

Windows:

• c:\Users\[username]\WordfastPro\Projects

MacOS and Windows:

• Important file in WordfastPro folder: applications.settings [2]
  • Personal preferences, project names etc. are stored in this file
• DO NOT store your project, TM or glossary files in Dropbox, GoogleDrive, OneDrive, iCloud or similar folders as this can corrupt them and slow down your computer considerably.

Location for TMs and glossaries

No default location is suggested by Wordfast Pro. However, a future implementation will create default locations under the WordfastPro folder. We recommend using this default location.

DO NOT store TM or glossary folders on cloud-based drives.

If you change the default location, we suggest saving them here:

• MacOS:
  • Macintosh HD:Users:[username]:documents:TM
  • Macintosh HD:Users:[username]:documents:Glossaries
• Windows:
  • c:\users\[username]\documents\TM
  • c:\users\[username]\documents\Glossaries

Project structure

A project is a folder (project folder has the same name as the project) that contains a master file (project.wf4) and a bunch of subfolders (archive, source, [target-language], references, report, txlf).

The master file project.wf4 is an XML file that contains preferences for the project and pointers to the project files.

Below is an example hierarchy of project folders:

Content of project folders:

• source: contains source files (DOCX, PPTX etc.) added to the project
• fr-FR (target language): only contains subfolders, no files
• report: contains report files (e.g analysis, transcheck, etc.), file extension .rpt (= XML file)
• txlf: contains bilingual files in the TXLF format (variant of XLIFF)
• archive:
  • Contains source/TXLF files that have been removed from project
  • Contains source/TXLF/reference files if project removed from list

Remove icon

Can be used to remove files (source and TXLF), TMs, glossaries, blacklists, reference files and projects.

Remove does not delete items from the your hard drive.

When removing TXLF files (not TMs, glossaries), you are given the option to archive them. Archiving saves a copy of the files to the project’s archive folder.

References

1. This folder can/should be deleted if Wordfast Pro fails to start.
2. Include applications.settings in your regular backup routine, as it contains all your preferences and the list of all your projects.