Quite often, many users of modern computer systems and software products of various types encounter files with the extension .xml. Many simply do not imagine what kind of document this is, how to open it. We will now discuss how to open an XML file. At the same time, we will find out what it is and what it is for.
What is an XML file?
Perhaps, we will start with the fact that, from the point of view of modern computer technologies and programs used to create documents of this type, the XML format is a text file in which the commands of the universal extensible markup language are written, which quite strongly resembles the well-known HTML markup tool.
As a rule, an XML file contains general information about an object, which is expressed by descriptive means (more on this later). As for the data stored in such containers, it can be databases often used for video and audio catalogs on the Internet, saved user settings for programs and applications, as well as entire web pages.
As an example, we can take, say, an audio album of some artist. The XML file includes information on the year of release, genre, number and names of tracks, popularity, etc. However, when visiting resources on the World Wide Web, the surfer does not need to think about physically opening such an information file, because even when playing a song online in the player All data will be displayed by the type of those contained in standard MP3 files in the form of ID3 tags. Information is as if loaded to a reproduced track.
XML file view
If you look at the type of file, you can immediately notice that in it the properties of any object are described using tags and attributes that are set manually.
We are not talking about the main commands of the language itself, since the average user does not need such information. The only thing that can be noted is that a certain number of elements used to describe the object in this format does not exist: how much is needed, so much is set.
How to open the standard XML format
Now let's see how to open an XML file. As many have probably already understood, this is a text file, which means that it’s easiest to use any, even the most primitive editor, to view or edit it. Yes, at least the same Notepad from the standard set of Windows.
However, it is not so simple. The fact is that by double-clicking the file without setting the appropriate association with any program it will not open. In the best case, the system will offer a list of the most suitable applications. You can choose the program of your choice, and at the same time put a check mark in front of the item of constant use of the selected application for all files of this type.
You can do otherwise by right-clicking on the file and then choosing the "Open with ..." command, and then, again, select the desired application either from the list or specify the location of the main executable component (most often it is an EXE file).
The third way to open the XML file is to start the program first, and then use the file open menu (in most cases this is Ctrl + O). In this case, it is completely optional to use Notepad. Please, the file opens without any problems in the same Word application and the like. Even Microsoft Excel can open data of this format.
However, if there is a need to edit the XML format, then it is better to use professional utilities with language syntax support, for example, Oxygen XML Editor, XML Marker or EditiX Lite Version. Naturally, these are far from all utilities that can work with the file language at the highest level. Today, such programs can be found a lot.
Now a few words about why an XML file error sometimes appears when you open it. Most often this is due to a violation of the integrity of the file itself, as well as the incorrect introduction of descriptive attributes or tags. In addition, in Excel there is a limit on the limit of the displayed rows, so in this case, the data when opened may be incomplete.
Possible errors when opening an XML file as an email attachment
Sometimes errors may appear when an attempt is made to open a file that is an e-mail attachment. Most often this applies to standard email clients like Outlook Express.
The fact is that at first the attachment is saved as temporary data (very often with the addition of the additional .tmp to the main extension), and it is accessed specifically to it.
To avoid this situation, it is enough to initially save the attachment in the original format at any convenient place on the disk or on removable media, and then use the standard methods described above.
Instead of a total
As you can see, there is nothing complicated in understanding the structure and ways of opening files of this format. Here, however, the issue of creating XML data was not fundamentally considered, since for a complete understanding of the process you need to know at least the basics of the language itself. For the rest, I think that users will not have difficulties with files of this format.