Microsoft KB Archive/295008

= Some characters cause a smart tag list to fail =

Article ID: 295008

Article Last Modified on 1/31/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Office Excel 2007
 * Microsoft Office Excel 2003
 * Microsoft Excel 2002 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q295008



SYMPTOMS
When you install a Smart Tag List and then start Microsoft Excel, the Smart Tag List fails to load. Alternatively, in Microsoft Internet Explorer, when you open the Extensible Markup Language (XML) file created for a Smart Tag List, you receive an error message similar to the following:

The XML page cannot be displayed

Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.

A semi colon character was expected.



CAUSE
The ampersand (&), quotation mark (&quot;), apostrophe ('), and element delimeters (<) and (>), are not allowed within parsed character data, such as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).



WORKAROUND
To work around the issue, use either of the following methods.

Method 1: Use Entity References
Use entity references instead of the actual characters:
 * Instead of &, use &amp;
 * Instead of &quot;, use "
 * Instead of ', use &apos;
 * Instead of <, use <
 * Instead of >, use >

For example, in the following URL http://search.microsoft.com/us/SearchMS25.asp?so=RECCNT&qu={TEXT} you can replace the ampersand with &amp; as below: http://search.microsoft.com/us/SearchMS25.asp?so=RECCNT&amp;qu={TEXT}

Method 2: Use the CDATA Construct
Use the CDATA construct, which treats the entire string as plain text, for example:

http://search.microsoft.com/us/SearchMS25.asp?so=RECCNT&amp;qu={TEXT}

