Minor Files

word/styles.xml

Deleted and opened without complaint, but the styles were all different, naturally. I’ll have to come back to this one.

word/theme/theme1.xml

After deleting it, Word opened the file but had to repair it. I looked inside it and it was pretty uninteresting.

_rels/.rels

Initial State

The original file looks like this, except that I’ve prettified it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Relationships xmlns="[schema url]">
 <Relationship  Id="rId3"
                Target="docProps/core.xml"
                Type="[schema url]">
 <Relationship  Id="rId4"
                Target="docProps/app.xml"
                Type="[schema url]">
 <Relationship  Id="rId1"
                Target="word/document.xml"
                Type="[schema url]">
 <Relationship  Id="rId2"
                Target="docProps/thumbnail.jpeg"
                Type="[schema url]">
</Relationships>

Pretty verbose. I’ll simplify it to the following for clarity’s sake:

<?xml?>
<Rels>
 <Rel Target="docProps_core.xml"/>
 <Rel Target="docProps_app.xml"/>
 <Rel Target="word_document.xml"/>
 <Rel Target="docProps_thumbnail.jpeg"/>
</Rels>

Simplification

  1. Removing the file entirely: FAIL
  2. Removing all four <Relationship/> tags: FAIL
  3. Removing the docProps/core.xml tag: SUCCESS
  4. Removing the docProps/app.xml tag: SUCCESS
  5. Removing the docProps/thumbnail.xml tag: SUCCESS

The last three steps were cumulative. In the end, I had a working file with this:

<?xml?>
<Rels>
 <Rel Target="word_document.xml"/>
</Rels>

Or, in full:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Relationships xmlns="[schema url]">
 <Relationship  Id="rId1"
                Target="word/document.xml"
                Type="[schema url]">
</Relationships>

It would seem that only the word/document.xml is essential, which makes sense. Even then, I was able further to remove some of the metadata from the tags ang get Word to open them, although it had to repair them. The most minimal file I could produce was this:

<Relationships>
 <Relationship  Target="word/document.xml"
                Type="[schema url]">
</Relationships>

The <?xml?> declaration, the xmlns attribute, and the Id attribute were all expendable, at the cost of having to open the file and have it be repaired.

Having done all this, I now question the utility of changing this file if it just has to be copied over anyway. Oh well.