Ed from AZ wrote:
> We have been having some issues with our servers and with changing the
> program that reads our XML files (a proprietary report program).  We
> have several XML files that we can open with NotePad, but the report
> program throws this error:
> 
> "Only one top level element is allowed in an XML document."
> 
> Where can I go to begin understanding what this error means and how we
> might hunt it down and kill it?

What it means is easy enough. Every XML document must have one outermost 
(top-level) element and no more. So this is OK:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<foo>stuff</foo>

but this is not:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<foo>stuff</foo>
<foo>more stuff</foo>

If there is more than one, they should have been enclosed in a single 
outermost element, eg:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<bar>
   <foo>stuff</foo>
   <foo>more stuff</foo>
</bar>

As to the error, you don't say what software you are using (the name of 
the parser that is throwing this error), but it may be that there isn't 
actually a second instance of the top-level element type, but just some 
crud after the end-tag of the element that is causing the parser to spit 
blood, eg

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<foo>stuff</foo>
^Z

Of course, a decent parser would report something like "character data 
not allowed after the root element", but it might also be a stray < 
character from somewhere, like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<foo>stuff</foo>
<

As the < signals the start of a tag, and no more elements are allowed in 
this position, this might be enough to trip the error condition.

And it could of course be 1,001 other things too...

///Peter
-- 
XML FAQ: http://xml.silmaril.ie/