An interesting problem has cropped up at work a few times, including today: A Word (2007) document copied from a network drive to desktop only opens by referring back to the remote drive from which it was taken, i.e., trying to contact the drive. This remains the case even after the document has been copied to a flash drive or burned to CD. If the remote drive is not available, the file won't open. It has only happened a few times in the past year.

Today, I discovered that by using the Prepare function of removing custom XML data from the document, the problem disappears and it opens normally. The document in question this time was a corporate proposal .docx in a custom template, created in-house. How the custom XML entered, I have no clue, unless attached to the client's logo, which was perhaps copied from their RFP document or the web.

Today, to be safe, I copied the document before removing the XML, and then ran a quick side-by-side visual inspection. All fine.

I know that XML is the background mark-up language, and that it allows easier conversion of a document to a web page or other medium, but that's about all. Looking up custom XML data, what I have found is either too general or too detailed to grasp. I'm still wondering



1. what it might be doing in a standard document we create in Word here, and
2. what risk, if any, of changing something in the Word document might be involved in removing it.