You cannot insert a paragraph mark inside an inline XML tag in a Word 2003 document (833333)

SYMPTOMS

When you try to insert a paragraph mark inside an inline XML element in a Microsoft Office Word 2003 document, Word 2003 does not add the paragraph mark inside the XML element. Instead, Word 2003 moves the text that follows the paragraph mark outside the XML element.

CAUSE

This is the expected behavior in a Word 2003 document. Word 2003 represents XML tags in two ways: inline or block level. An inline tag is inside a paragraph while a block level tag contains paragraphs.

Inline XML tags inside a paragraph can only contain other XML items inside the tag, such as text, fields, and other forms of formatting.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this behavior, you must use an XML block level tag. To do this, follow these steps:

Select the whole paragraph or the whole paragraphs that you want, including the paragraph marks for each paragraph.
In the XML Structure pane, in the Choose an element to apply to your current selection list, click an XML element tag.

Note When you work with XML, it might be helpful to view the tags. To view the XML tags, view the Show XML tags in the document box in the XML Structure pane.

If the tag is not applied correctly, the Elements in the document item in the XML Structure pane will have a question mark next to the element.

If the tag is applied correctly, the Elements in the document item in the XML Structure pane will not have a question mark next to the element.

Because a block level tag contains the paragraph mark and everything inside the paragraph, and the block level tag exists around the paragraph, the tag can contain multiple paragraphs. However, block level tags cannot contain part of one paragraph and part of another paragraph because the result would not be well-formed XML.