Good evening, all.

I'm writing to ask for help with opening XML files. I have an app from Carbonite that backs up SMS messages on my phone, and stores the backups as XML.

I have a selection of files now, from 43KB to something like 27MB. There's a stylesheet in the folder as well.

I can double-click on a small file, and it loads right up in Explorer without issue. Larger files, I would think, would work the same but take longer to load. But what I find is that larger files just don't load at all. I simply get an empty tab in Explorer.

Trying to load one of them directly into Excel (where I'd like for the data to end up anyway) doesn't go smoothly either. Excel asks me which stylesheet to apply, and I point it to the one in the folder. Then I get an error that says, "The file and format of [filename] don't match. The file could be corrupted or unsafe. [Blah, blah, blah.] Do you want to open it anyway?"

I tell it to open anyway, and it faults again, citing an XML parse error.

So. At this point, I can't open a large file and I can't cut it into smaller portions. Is there a better way?

try notepad++

I can open them with notepad, but the copy-and-paste to Excel gets really messy -- lots of excess info.

I did just try opening one of the bad files with Firefox. Firefox points out a particular line and column where it faults. I can replace the short text string at that location with a known character (period, for instance) and the file will load. So it appears there is some sense to the idea that the file is fouled.

The next thing I find is that once I've fixed such errors and can open the file, any pictures that have come in (MMS, rather than SMs) do show up in Firefox, but a copy-and-paste to Excel dumps the pictures. One trouble after the next, right?

Notepad++

It is freeware with no strings attached. It opens all sorts of files.

Ken

Not notepad

notepad++
Very different products.
notepad++ is very powerful

quote:

Originally posted by eyrich:
Not notepad

notepad++
Very different products.
notepad++ is very powerful

I see now. Thank you.

You ought to be able to open them with Excel IF they are well formed.

quote:

Originally posted by eyrich:
try notepad++

That's what I use for XMLs at work

Another vote for Notepad++.

Got it!
Thank you all.

Notepad++

Install then use the Plugin Manager to add XMLTools.

Pretty Print with line breaks will make the .xml easy to read.

If you ever want to edit a column TextFX is very useful as well.

It sounds like you're using Windows. WordPad can open XML files and display them in proper format.

 
As mentioned already, a good text editor. For Windows, notepad++. On my Mac I use my favorite text editor, BBEdit. All of the markup stuff is highlighted in different colors making it easy to pick out and edit the actual text. OS X/macOS has thousands of .plist files which control many facets of the working system and applications. They are all in XML format, and I regularly edit them with BBEdit (or vi, if it's in a root folder).

I don't think you want to use excel. XML is 'tagged' data, excel will break that link, unless you import it into a structured row/column format. Depending on what all data is in the xml file, that ranges from trivial to impossible. It probably defeats the purpose of having the xml format in the first place.

PsPad is also a good file editor, similar to Notepad++

Are you just double clicking on the XML file or are you importing it?

https://www.howtoexcel.org/pow...ry/import-xml-files/

++ for Notepad++, also get the "XML Tools Plugin" for Notepad++.

I've heard that Notepad++ can be used for this.

Thanks, all. Lots of mentions of Notepad++.
I hadn't seen it before, but a customer was in-house last week and used it to edit some Python files. It looks pretty neat; I'll give it a try.

Wonder if it will run on a Mac, too...?

No, but there are good MacOS options. I use Textmate myself for general purpose... or vi. For cross platform, there’s vi (really), or something like Atom.