Sometimes a target segment should stay blank on purpose - the source content doesn't apply in the target language, or a client instruction or style guide says to leave it out. Normally wxrks won't let you confirm a segment with nothing in the target field, precisely to stop an accidentally-empty segment from slipping through. Confirming empty target segments is the deliberate exception to that rule.
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This is only available for .DOCX, .PPTX, and .XLSX files, because these formats can have structural tags inside a segment - formatting or layout markers the final file needs in order to render correctly. If a segment like that is left empty without the structural tags being accounted for, the exported file can fail to compile properly. That's why the option has to be turned on deliberately per file, rather than being allowed everywhere by default.

💡 Who is this for? This guide is for Account Admins and Project Managers uploading a DOCX, PPTX, or XLSX file who need to allow an empty target segment, and for Vendors who then confirm that segment empty while translating.

The option lives in the file's own loading parameters, alongside the other format-specific flags for that file type. Upload your DOCX, PPTX, or XLSX file into a project as usual, then click the file's row to open its parameters and turn on Allow Empty Target Segments before continuing.

This is a per-file setting, so it needs to be turned on for each file that actually needs an empty segment - it doesn't apply retroactively to files already uploaded without it.

Based on the previous version of this article (not independently re-verified against a live example this session - see the note on this article's screenshot below): turning the option on shows a disclaimer explaining why it's off by default - if the source segment carries structural tags required for the file to render correctly, leaving the segment empty could cause problems compiling the final file, since those structural tags would have nowhere to go. The setting is there so you can make that call deliberately, file by file, rather than have wxrks silently guess.

Based on the previous version of this article, not independently re-verified this session: once the option is on for that file, a segment that's genuinely meant to stay blank can be confirmed with an empty target field in the Editor, the same way any other segment is confirmed - normally this isn't possible, so this is the one situation where it is. The file's preview then renders the document without that segment's content at all, since there's nothing there to show - the empty segment simply doesn't appear in the rendered output, while the file's underlying structure (including its structural tags) stays intact.

[SCREENSHOT PLACEHOLDER: an actual confirmed-empty segment in the Editor, its disclaimer popup, and the file preview with that segment excluded] - a disposable test file built for this rebuild (a paragraph containing only a bold, text-less line-break run) was uploaded with this option turned on, but the file's parser did not create a distinct segment for that paragraph at all - it was silently dropped rather than surfaced as a confirmable empty segment, so there was nothing to screenshot the confirm action, disclaimer, or preview-exclusion behavior against. This is a real limitation of the specific fixture attempted, not a decision to skip the capture - a genuinely appropriate source file (one built directly in Word/PowerPoint/Excel with an intentionally empty but tag-bearing cell or paragraph, rather than generated via a script) would very likely behave differently and is worth a follow-up capture pass.