There are alternative approaches and which I covered in my blog Windward Wrocks (links and better formatting at my blog):
Custom XML for Word and the i4i patent case Windward Reports never
used Custom XML (or bookmarks) for tagging. (We looked at both but
each approach has issues that make them problematic at times.) But we
do use tagging in Word, Excel, & PowerPoint as our report designer. We
do have a very powerful Office AddIn to support this tagging. So I
think I have as good an understanding of the issues around this as one
can have and yet still be a disinterested party.
I'm not going to give an opinion on the case except to say I wish they
could have reached an agreement. The big losers on this are everyone
who made use of Custom XML for tagging as this is now removed. (And to
say a pox on all software patents.)
First for the programmers who have to adjust, there is a product from
i4i that hacks around this called x4w. However, I don't think that is
your best solution (explained below). My suggestion is to switch to
using content controls, fields, bitmaps, and/or plain old text. The
first three of these approaches are more robust than custom XML and
are still supported by Word. We use all four approaches (user
selected) and they are rock solid.
So what do you do if you have custom XML in your Word documents? If
you don't use the custom XML, then there's no problem, just open the
files and Word will strip it out, leaving you the rest of the
document. Same if your use can be switched to using another feature.
You will lose your existing markers but otherwise can continue.
If you need to find any files that have custom XML in them, this
program for Microsoft will do the job (DOCX/DOCM only). Also, this
restriction only comes in to play for Word 2007 sold on or after 11
January this year – and all copies of Word 2010. Microsoft has a good
summation here.
If you must have the custom XML, your only option at present is x4w.
However, I strongly recommend that you only use this as a stop-gap
measure as you find an alternative to custom XML. Because you could
find that the next service pack of Word will render x4w unable to save
your custom XML. As there is no love lost between Microsoft and i4i, I
would not be surprised to see in the next service pack:
1.Word drops support for custom XML. At present it strips the custom
XML out but when it is inserted back in, Word still has the
functionality to display and use it. But if custom XML support is not
allowed, they can then remove that functionality from Word. 2.Word
strips custom XML on saving as well as on loading a document. If this
occurs i4i can try to hack around this too, but this is a much more
difficult problem. And for cases that the hack fails, you won't know
until the next time you open the file – and all your work is lost.
3.Word changes at what point during the load process that it strips
out the custom XML. It presently occurs before the open document event
(which I assume is when x4w inserts the custom XML back in). But Word
could strip it out right after that event – and it is then a much
harder hack to get the custom XML back in.