Home/ Questions/Q 3751182
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-19T09:02:17+00:00

I am trying to write the following into an XML document: <html xmlns:o=urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office xmlns:x=urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel

  • 0

I am trying to write the following into an XML document:

<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

    <head>
     <xml> 
      <x:ExcelWorkbook>
       <x:ExcelWorksheets>
        <x:ExcelWorksheet>
         other code here
        </x:ExcelWorksheet>
       </x:ExcelWorksheets>
      </x:ExcelWorkbook>
     </xml>
    </head>
   </html>

However, if I use the following code, it strips out the ‘x:’.

System.Xml.XmlDocument document = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();

System.Xml.XmlElement htmlNode = document.CreateElement("html");
htmlNode.SetAttribute("xmlns:o", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office");
htmlNode.SetAttribute("xmlns:x", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel");
htmlNode.SetAttribute("xmlns", "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40");
document.AppendChild(htmlNode);

System.Xml.XmlElement headNode = document.CreateElement("head");
htmlNode.AppendChild(headNode);
headNode.AppendChild(
  document.CreateElement("xml")).AppendChild(
  document.CreateElement("x:ExcelWorkbook"))).AppendChild(
  document.CreateElement("x:ExcelWorksheets")).AppendChild(
  document.CreateElement("x:ExcelWorksheet")).InnerText="other code here";

How can I stop this from happening?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use the XmlDocument.CreateElement overload which allows you to specify the required prefix & namespace of the element e.g.

    document.CreateElement("x", "ExcelWorkbook", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel");

    Example

    From your comment I think you have went ahead and create every element in the way I have suggested. What I was referring to was how to get your Excel specific elements to have the correct namespace prefix. See my example below to see how to properly associate each of your elements with the correct namespace prefix:

    // store ns in a local variable as it is going to be re-used
const string HTML_NS = "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40";
const string EXCEL_NS = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel";

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
// create the HTML element and set the HTML namespace as the default
XmlElement htmlElement = doc.CreateElement("html", HTML_NS);
// add the office/excel namespaces into the HTML element (so we can reference them later)
htmlElement.SetAttribute("xmlns:o", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office");
htmlElement.SetAttribute("xmlns:x", EXCEL_NS);
doc.AppendChild(htmlElement);
// associate the HEAD element with the HTML namespace as this is a HTML element
XmlElement headElement = doc.CreateElement("head", HTML_NS);    
htmlElement.AppendChild(headElement);
// now this is the one I am not too sure about as I don't know which 
// namespace you would associate the XML tag with. If you run the code 
// as it is specified here it will write out as <xml xmlns=""> which is
// correct as we aren't associating it with a namespace. As a workaround 
// you could associate it with the HTML NS if it is just for writing out 
XmlElement xmlElement = doc.CreateElement("xml", HTML_NS);   
headElement.AppendChild(xmlElement);
// create ExcelWorkbook element and associate with the excel namespace
// Unlike the HTML/HEAD tags we need to supply the prefix here because the Excel
// namespace is not the default
XmlElement xlWorkbookElement = doc.CreateElement("x", "ExcelWorkbook", EXCEL_NS);
xmlElement.AppendChild(xlWorkbookElement);
// create ExcelWorksheets element and associate with the excel namespace
XmlElement xlWorksheetsElement = doc.CreateElement("x", "ExcelWorksheets", EXCEL_NS);
xlWorkbookElement.AppendChild(xlWorksheetsElement);
// create the ExcelWorksheet element and associate with the excel namespace
XmlElement xlWorksheetElement = doc.CreateElement("x", "ExcelWorksheet", EXCEL_NS);
xlWorksheetsElement.AppendChild(xlWorksheetElement);

    Hope that clears things up for you.

    • 0