Excel® Programming: Your visual blueprint™ for creating interactive spreadsheets

Chapter 19. Understanding XML

Introducing XML

The default file format for Office 2007 and Office 2010 is EXtensible Markup Language (XML). For this reason, as a VBA programmer, you should have a basic understanding of XML.

The appeal of XML is that it makes exchanging data between different software applications and different computer systems easier. After you mark up your data using XML, it is available to be processed by a variety of different systems, without regard to hardware or operating system. You can use the same XML data in Word, Excel, and Access, and other programs. Prior to Office 2007, Office files were in a proprietary format. Manipulating and sharing the data with other applications and systems was difficult.

XML is similar to HyperText ...