How to open an XML file ?

XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. It defines the format of data and it is similar to HTML as both are markup languages but while HTML has a predefined set of standard tags, XML has user-defined tags, although has a starting standard tag:

<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”UTF-8”?>

XML is a lot closer to JSON than HTML because it provides a conventional format of data transmission.

There are 4 ways of opening an XML file:

• Using a text editor
• Using a browser
• Using an XML Viewer
• Using Excel

We will explore all these methods, along with their implementations in a step-wise manner.

Method 1: Using a text editor

 if you want to open your XML file outside your browser/offline, you can use either of the following editors:

• Notepad
• Notepad++
• Sublime Text
• VSCode
• WordPad

Here, VSCode and Sublime Text editors are used to open and edit heavy XML files.

Steps for opening the XML file:

• Step 1: Right-click the XML file and select “Open With.”

  

• Step 2: Select “Notepad” from the given options that drop down upon clicking “Open with”.

  

• Step 3: Now you can open the file the XML file in Notepad.

  

Method 2: Using a browser Almost every browser can be used to open an XML file. To open the XML file in Google Chrome, follow the below steps:

• Step 1:Right-click the XML file and select “Open With.”

  

• Step 2: Select “Google Chrome” from the given options that drop down upon clicking “Open with”.

  

• Step 3: Now you can open the file the XML file in Google Chrome. You can use either of the browsers to open the XML file.

  

Method 3:Using an XML Viewer, if you want to open your XML file inside your browser/online, you can use the following sites:

• Code Beautify
• JSON Formatter
• XML Explorer

Here, you can either upload the XML file or directly copy and paste the contents of the file.

Steps for modifying the XML file:

• Step 1: Open the webpage of Code Beautify and click on XML viewer.

  

• Step 2: Upload the file or copy-paste it.

  

• Step 3: You can use Tree View to improve the ways to view the hierarchy of the content.

  

Method 4: Using Excel It is not suitable to use Excel when there are numerous tags in the XML file.

• Step 1: Open MS-Excel and click on the “File” button.

  

• Step 2: Now go to the option “Open” and upon clicking on it you will encounter a few other options, select the option “Browse”.

  

• Step 3: Upon clicking “Browse”, a tab will open from which select the XML file and click on “Open”.