Thank you for the suggestion. I get the option to open in XML Editor, but the result is no different than clicking directly on the file since the default is to open in XML Editor. Yes, I tried opening the file directly in Excel, but I guess the way the SMS backup program (SyncDroid) creates the XML file really creates a mess in Excel, and several messages are completely X'd out. Strange.

I found a work-around, although a bit time consuming. With all 23 messages in the Word doc, I sequentially numbered the messages, placing the numbers in front of the first word of each message, and used the number Sort option, descending order. But still no dates for each message other than in the form of (eg) 1572810081000. How anyone can get 11/03/19 out of that is beyond me.

Sure glad I'm not working with 100s of messages, but I don't text that much.