Translate an Excel file into Polish

What Polish changes in a spreadsheet

Spreadsheets are full of short, isolated labels, and that is exactly where Polish behaves differently. Nouns change form depending on their role: “Customer” on its own becomes Klient, but “Customer name” becomes Nazwa klienta and “Invoice No.” becomes Nr faktury. The same word can therefore appear in two forms in neighbouring columns; that is correct Polish, and a good reason to write headers in full rather than abbreviate them.

• Length: Polish words are often long (Wynagrodzenie, Przedsiębiorstwo, Zamówienia). A header that only just fitted a narrow column may no longer fit.
• Diacritics: ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź and ż must exist in the cell font. Standard office fonts include them; a decorative typeface or an older corporate font may show empty boxes or fall back to a substitute.
• Register: data-entry instructions in Polish usually use the imperative or the infinitive (Wpisz datę, “enter the date”); the formal Pan or Pani is kept for text addressed to a named person.

Formulas, numbers and plurals: what stays put

Manuce leaves formulas alone: a calculated cell keeps its formula and keeps calculating, and numbers, dates and amounts stay exactly as they are. That is what you want from a workbook, but it has three consequences worth checking when the target is Polish.

1. Text typed inside a formula. =IF(C2="Paid","OK","Chase") is kept as it is, strings included. Once column C reads Zapłacono, the test no longer finds “Paid” and the formula returns “Chase” on every row. A VLOOKUP whose key is a label typed into the formula has the same problem.
2. Plurals built by concatenation. =A2&" items" has no simple Polish equivalent, because Polish has four plural forms: 1 artykuł, 2 artykuły, 5 artykułów, 22 artykuły. A formula that attaches one fixed word to a number will be wrong for part of the values; a label such as Liczba artykułów: 5 avoids the issue.
3. Custom number formats. These are preserved, including any text in them: a format such as 0" days" will still display “days”. Standard formats follow the regional settings of the reader's Excel, so a Polish user will usually see a decimal comma and a space as thousands separator. Amounts are not converted into złoty.

Function names are not a concern: Excel displays them in the language of its installation, so a Polish user sees JEŻELI where you see IF, with no change to the file.

What you receive, and what is not translated

You get your original .xlsx back with the text replaced in place: column widths, colours, borders, number formats, filters and merged cells are preserved. You also receive a Word version, a PDF and the plain text, which make it easy for a Polish-speaking colleague to review the translation without opening every sheet.

What Manuce does not do:

• Sheet tab names are left unchanged: “Sales 2024” does not become Sprzedaż 2024. If you rename the tab in Excel, formulas that refer to it update automatically.
• Cell comments, charts, and shapes or text boxes placed on the sheet are not translated.
• Narrow columns are not widened: a longer Polish header may be cut off on screen, just as overlong text already is in the original.

Manuce does not provide sworn translation. If the workbook must go to a Polish authority or court bearing the stamp of a tłumacz przysięgły, you will need a sworn translator.

Preparing the workbook and checking the result

Before uploading:

• Replace abbreviated headers (Qty, Amt excl. VAT) with full words: the translation will be more reliable (Ilość, Kwota netto), and you can shorten afterwards to suit the space.
• Find the formulas that compare or join text (IF, VLOOKUP on labels, concatenations) and note where they are.
• Delete draft sheets you do not need: the quote is based on the exact word count of the workbook.

After delivery:

• Widen any column where Polish text is cut off, or turn on text wrapping for the header row.
• Check that ą, ę, ł, ż and ź display properly, particularly in cells using a corporate style.
• Test the formulas you noted, and your filters: filtered lists now show Polish values, and a saved filter on “Paid” will return nothing.
• Rename the tabs and translate comments and chart titles yourself.

For a workbook going to Polish partners, the Professional level is the appropriate choice; Essential is enough for internal use.

In practice

1. Upload the .xlsx file and choose Polish: the quote appears straight away, based on the exact word count.
2. Read the free sample, translated at your chosen level, to judge how the labels come out.
3. Pay and download the translated workbook, plus its Word version, PDF and plain text.
4. Widen truncated columns, rename the tabs and test any formulas that work on text.