Translate an Excel file into Greek with formulas left intact

What Greek changes in a spreadsheet

Greek reads left to right, like English, but uses its own alphabet. The first practical consequence in Excel is that the font in each cell must contain Greek glyphs. Calibri, Arial and Times New Roman do; a decorative typeface or a corporate brand font may not, in which case the text falls back to another font or appears as empty boxes.

Greek text is often longer than the English for the same label, and Greek words themselves are long: Quantity becomes Ποσότητα, Delivery date becomes Ημερομηνία παράδοσης. In a narrow column header, that is the difference between a readable label and a clipped one.

Two typographic rules matter directly in tables:

• The stress accent (tonos) is written on lower-case letters (Ποσότητα) but usually dropped in capitals, so an all-caps header is normally ΠΟΣΟΤΗΤΑ, with no accent.
• The Greek question mark looks like a semicolon. A column headed Paid? becomes Πληρώθηκε; and that is correct. It only becomes a nuisance if you later export the sheet as a semicolon-delimited CSV and the import is poorly configured.

For plurals, Greek has one singular and one plural form, as English does, but the noun itself changes: 1 item and 3 items become 1 είδος and 3 είδη. This is why sentences stitched together from cells and formulas translate badly (see below).

Formulas, criteria and numbers: what stays as it is

Manuce does not touch formulas: a calculated cell keeps its formula and keeps calculating. That is deliberate, but it has consequences worth knowing before you move a workbook into Greek.

• Text criteria. =COUNTIF(D2:D200,"Yes") counts cells containing Yes. Once those cells read Ναι, the formula is still looking for Yes and returns 0. The same applies to IF, SUMIF or VLOOKUP whenever they compare against a word.
• Text built by a formula. ="Total: "&B12&" items" stays in the source language, because the text lives inside the formula. In Greek, noun agreement with the number makes this kind of concatenation unreliable anyway.
• Custom number formats. Formats are kept exactly as they are, so a format such as 0" pcs" will still display pcs.
• Numbers, dates and amounts keep their original values. Greek convention uses a decimal comma, a full stop for thousands, day/month/year dates and the € sign after the amount; with standard formats, how these display depends mainly on the regional settings of the computer opening the file.

Finally, Greek alphabetical order is not Latin order: a customer or product list sorted in the source language will no longer be sorted once translated. Filters are preserved, so simply re-sort on the translated column.

What Manuce returns, and what it leaves alone

Manuce translates the text cells on every sheet of the workbook and returns your original .xlsx with the Greek text in the same cells. Column widths, colours, borders, number formats, filters and merged cells are all preserved. You also receive a Word version, a PDF and plain text, which make it easy for a Greek speaker to review the content without clicking through each sheet.

Not translated:

• sheet tab names (a tab called Sales 2024 keeps that name);
• cell comments and notes;
• charts;
• shapes and text boxes placed on the sheet.

Narrow columns are not widened. If Ημερομηνία παράδοσης is wider than the column, it will be cut off on screen, just as an over-long label would have been in the original. The cell content itself is complete.

Greek carries a language surcharge: a ×1.25 coefficient applies to the per-word rate, already included in the quote shown when you upload. Manuce does not produce certified (sworn) translations; if the workbook must go to a Greek authority with a certified translation, such as financial statements or supporting records, you will need a sworn translator.

Preparing the workbook and checking the Greek

Before uploading:

• If your template uses a particular font, check that it includes the Greek alphabet, or switch to a common one.
• List the formulas that compare against a word (Yes, Settled, Overdue). Either update them to the Greek word after translation, or replace the word with a neutral code (1/0, a tick box) beforehand.
• If important text sits in comments or text boxes and must be read in Greek, move it into cells.

After delivery:

• Codes and references. Several Greek capitals look identical to Latin ones (Α, Β, Ε, Κ, Μ, Ο, Τ). If a VLOOKUP on a reference such as AB-120 returns #N/A although everything looks the same, check that the reference has not been written with Greek letters. Look at these columns in the free extract first, then in the full translation.
• All-caps headers: check that they follow the no-accent convention.
• Clipped columns: widen them or turn on text wrapping for the affected headers.
• Tab names: rename them by hand if the workbook is meant for a Greek reader.

In practice

1. Check that the workbook font contains Greek characters and note any formulas that compare against a word.
2. Upload the .xlsx: the quote appears at once, based on the exact word count.
3. Read the free extract, looking closely at a header and a column of reference codes.
4. Pay, then download the translated .xlsx along with the Word, PDF and plain-text versions.
5. Update formula criteria, rename the tabs and widen any clipped columns.