"Error in XML Format! Invalid Data in tag:" message when opening Lectora file

For anyone's reference, the issue is that Lectora sometimes messes up the XML structure in the .awt file. All you need is validate the XML against the schema, find the offending tag and remove it. No need to remove all resource tags or rebuild the course.

You can find the schema here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11433463/trivantis/lectora.dtd and use W3Schools validator.

I solved the problem by editing the my Lectora file in Notepad (right click your Lectora file and choose "open with" then select NotePad. I basically removed all my graphics and PDF references from the code. Afterward, the file worked liked a charm!

The content I removed looked like this:

planograph_question1.png

imagesplanograph_question1.png

000000000000

000000000000

000000000000

000000000000

planograph_information.pdf

planograph_information.pdf

000000000000

000000000000

000000000000

000000000000

Hi, I'm using vX.6 and have received the same error message but I can't open your dropbox link. Does it link to information you can put in a reply post?

Thanks,

Kris

For anyone's reference. I downloaded the trial version of v11 and opened the project without any problems. But I still need it to open in vX.6. I'm not in a position to buy v11.

This whole thing is just wrong. How can Lectora call their product user-friendly when I have to jump through hoops just to get it to open?

Regards

@ssneg 57143 wrote:

For anyone's reference, the issue is that Lectora sometimes messes up the XML structure in the .awt file. All you need is validate the XML against the schema, find the offending tag and remove it. No need to remove all resource tags or rebuild the course.

You can find the schema here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11433463/trivantis/lectora.dtd and use W3Schools validator.

Sergey, How do you get into the XML of the AWT if it does not open? Is there a sneaky way to access the proprietary code within the AWT without opening the course (since it won't open)?

@mendezdm 57138 wrote:

I solved the problem by editing the my Lectora file in Notepad (right click your Lectora file and choose "open with" then select NotePad. I basically removed all my graphics and PDF references from the code. Afterward, the file worked liked a charm!

The content I removed looked like this:

planograph_question1.png

imagesplanograph_question1.png

000000000000

000000000000

000000000000

000000000000

planograph_information.pdf

planograph_information.pdf

000000000000

000000000000

000000000000

000000000000

Tried this - didn't work for me. Still hoping!

My co-worker added an external HTML object to an AWT he developed. He closed it and when he went to open it again, received a Lectora Publisher error dialog box stating, “Error in XML Format! Invalid Data in tag:”

The AWT no longer opens or works. We do not have a back-up of this course, is there any way possible to restore the course or retrieve anything from within it? I am looking for a way to extract or look at the back-end of the AWT to try and fix or remove the buggy XML, much like with PowerPoint files, you can change the file type from .pptx to .zip and extract all the embedded objects (media, images, etc.) and then change it back to .pptx and it works.

Any ideas?

Since this is an old post, I am not able to open it in a newer version as the previous person mentioned, I am on the latest V11 and the problem still happened.

The end result, I sent my AWT to support and they were able to fix it and send it back. I am not sure what was wrong with the file nor how they fixed it, but the fact that they were able to fix it and return it fast, was invaluable.

@krixquet 61901 wrote:

The end result, I sent my AWT to support and they were able to fix it and send it back. I am not sure what was wrong with the file nor how they fixed it, but the fact that they were able to fix it and return it fast, was invaluable.

Hi, glad it worked out for you. Speaking of a "How do you get into the XML of the AWT if it does not open?" - AWT is, in fact, a pure well-formed XML file, only the file extension is different. So if you open it in any text editor (ideally, one that can highlight XML syntax, like Notepad++), you can edit it. E.g. you can find the offending HTML Extention object and remove it without even launching Lectora. Also handy for mass search and replace operations.

I opened it with Dreamweaver, but I think I just didn't know what I was looking for. It ended up being that one of the objects was not assigned an ID.

In case someone finds this thread (this sounds like a message in a bottle :))

Someone recently encountered this error (Title opens with message "Invalid data in tag:" with no other details) and I managed to fix it. For some reason, Lectora 11.3.2 added a couple empty < supportfile > tags:

[/CODE]

After I removed the two tags that didn't have ids, the title opened as usual.

Before discovering this problem manually, I tried to follow my own advice above and validate the AWT XML against Lectora DTD I linked earlier. However, I couldn't find the validator service I used last time and the one I found kept complaining that the DTD has bad syntax. If anyone can recommend a good XML/DTD validation service, I'd be really grateful. Thanks![CODE]

[/CODE]

After I removed the two tags that didn't have ids, the title opened as usual.

Before discovering this problem manually, I tried to follow my own advice above and validate the AWT XML against Lectora DTD I linked earlier. However, I couldn't find the validator service I used last time and the one I found kept complaining that the DTD has bad syntax. If anyone can recommend a good XML/DTD validation service, I'd be really grateful. Thanks!

Hi Sergey,

How do you validate your Lectora DTD with the Lectora Online xml file?

I have been getting this error:

Perfect! Thank you. I have the file open in Notepad, and looked through the entire file for resources without an "id" and have found nothing. They all look like this, which looks right to me. I'll open a support ticket, but thought I would check with you again first, to see if perhaps I'm just looking for the wrong thing.

undefinedresource id="380" resourcetype="image"undefined000000000000undefined000000000000undefined000000000000undefined000000000000undefined

Yes, you can open and edit the file in Notepad.

Thanks, Darrel. My plan is to open the AWT file and look for any objects that are missing a tag...is that what you would do? I'll be honest, I've never opened a Lectora file anywhere but in Lectora, so this should be interesting.

A user here encountered this error today. With Notepad, can I find the offending object that is missing it's id, or do I need a different tool?

Look at the end of the AWT. It should look like this:

undefined

There may be more closing tags before that.

Whenever I had similar issues, the code was cut off somewhere before the end. Can you share the file?

If it doesn't look like this, you'd have to find the last not-closed tag and insert the missing.

Tim

Make a copy first. Open the copy by selecting "open with" and you should have no problem.

Thanks, Tim. I ended up having to send this over to support, as I couldn't find anything wrong with the code, nothing appeared to be cut-off, and there weren't any missing tags. I appreciate your input though!