XL2002: XML File Is Treated as a Text File or a Blank File Is Opened

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This article was previously published under Q287076

Symptoms

When you attempt to open an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file with Microsoft Excel, one of the following behaviors may occur:

The file opens, but no text is displayed.

-or-
Excel starts the Text Import Wizard.

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Cause

This behavior occurs when both of the following conditions are true:

You are opening an XML file or an XML file with an Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) style sheet.

-and-
The XML file or XSL style sheet has a line feed or carriage return character inside a <?XML?> header or between an opening (<xsl>) and closing (</xsl>) header.

Example 1: Line Feed or Carriage Return in XML File

For example, an XML file containing the following header exhibits the behavior described in the "Symptoms" section of this article:

<?xml
version="1.0"?>
<a>
1
</a>

Example 2: Line Feed or Carriage Return in XSL File

The following XML file has an XSL style sheet called "employees.xsl":

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="employees.xsl"?>
<dataroot xmlns:od="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:officedata" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema-instance"  xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="employees.xsd">
<Employees>
<EmployeeID>1</EmployeeID>
<LastName>Davolio</LastName>
<FirstName>Nancy</FirstName>
</Employees>
</dataroot>

If "employees.xsl" contains the following text, the following behavior is exhibited when you open the XML file and specify to apply the style sheet:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl" language="vbscript">
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:pi name="xml"> version="1.0" 
</xsl:pi>
<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet" xmlns:n1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet">
<Worksheet n1:Name="Employees">
</Worksheet>
</Workbook>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

NOTE: The line that begins with <xsl:pi> has a carriage return before the </xsl:pi> header.

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Resolution

To resolve this issue, edit the XML files and XSL style sheets to remove all carriage-return and line-feed characters from between the starting and ending headers. The preceding examples work correctly if changed to the following:

Example 1

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<a>
1
</a>

Example 2

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl" language="vbscript">
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:pi name="xml"> version="1.0" </xsl:pi>
<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet" xmlns:n1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet">
<Worksheet n1:Name="Employees">
</Worksheet>
</Workbook>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

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