XML Import to Excel - DTD is Prohibited

Owned by Thomas Sherman (Deactivated)
Last updated: May 06, 2021
1 min read

When importing report data as XML into an Excel file you may encounter the error DTD is Prohibited. We believe this to be an Excel bug that occurs in the following scenario:

  1. Excel deployed via ClickOnce
  2. Connected to XML data via From Other Sources → Web
  3. Refreshing the data connection

On the backend Excel is truncating the URL at 115 characters. This makes diagnosing the issue difficult as it seems to randomly work on some URLs and not others.

You should use Excel - Import CSV instead of XML. It is a far better method and avoids this bug.