Where is the Word 2007 schema library stored?

Question

Word 2007 allows XML schemas to be attached to a document (under the Developer toolbar | XML group | Schema button). Where is this schema library information stored?

I have documents that I have created with custom XML tags based on a schema but when I pass on the document and the schema to someone else the schema is marked as unavailable, presumably because the file location of the schema is different.

Is there some way to edit this information to change the path to a given schema?

Answer 1

It's not stored with the docx, just the path to it is stored. So passing a document around will almost always break the link. VSTO can get around this by embedding the XSD as a resource in the app.

But for VBA, it's trickier - you need to have a path you can rely on on each user's computer and then deploy your XSD there. One way is to synch the Document_Open (or just use the AutoOpen) event so that when a user opens the document (warning: macro security needs to be dinked around with), you can simply "write" your XSD that is hard-coded as a string in code-behind and then write it to a file and then attach that file with a routine like:

Dim objSchema As XMLNamespace
Set objSchema = Application.XMLNamespaces.Add("c:\something\mynewlycreated.xsd")
objSchema.AttachToDocument ActiveDocument

So as you're not leaving behind artifacts, you could then delete that XSD from the user's computer on Document_Close or AutoClose.