Programming Excel with VBA and .NET

Other things to avoid

Excel does not support a number of other XML schema constructs when importing XML and a number of schema constructs when exporting XML. These constructs are listed in Tables 15-4 and 15-5, respectively.

Table 15-4. XML schema elements not supported when importing XML

Element	Description
any, anyAttribute	The any and anyAttribute elements allow you to include items that are not declared by the schema. Excel requires imported schemas to be explicit.
Recursive structures	Excel does not support recursive structures that are more than one level deep.
Abstract elements	Abstract elements are meant to be declared in the schema, but never used as elements. Abstract elements depend on other elements being substituted for the abstract element.
Substitution groups	Substitution groups allow an element to be swapped wherever another element is referenced. An element indicates that it’s a member of another element’s substitution group through the substitutionGroup attribute.
Mixed content	Mixed content is declared using mixed="true" on a complex type definition. Excel does not support the simple content of the complex type, but does support the child tags and attributes defined in that complex type.

Table 15-5. XML schema elements not supported when exporting XML

Item	Description
Lists of lists	Excel can export only repeating items that are one level deep. See the section "Avoid lists of lists,” earlier in this chapter.
Denormalized data	See the section ...