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2. Having the XML declaration ("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>") at the start of an XHTML document (before the DOCTYPE) is mandatory. The fact that a lot of XHTML documents don't have it is besides the point.
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Sigh. The original poster comes here with a problem. I help to solve that problem, and you have to come and sound all holier-than-thou-esque.
You're right about regular html not being xml. I remembered that after I posted, but forgot to change it. Wasn't really the issue here; these documents are xhtml. (Saying "nothing to do" with it, however, is certainly misleading. They are two children of common ancestors so-to-speak. Still I apologize if anyone was misled.)
As for the tag, however, according to the
W3C xhtml spec, this tag is not mandatory.
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An XML declaration is not required in all XML documents; however XHTML document authors are strongly encouraged to use XML declarations in all their documents. Such a declaration is required when the character encoding of the document is other than the default UTF-8 or UTF-16 and no encoding was determined by a higher-level protocol.
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Moreover, the lack of this tag does not prevent xhtml from validating.
But even if some other spec somewhere says it's mandatory, but given what this thread is about, and the problem the original poster was having,
what could possibly be more to the point than the fact this is unusual? It's obvious that in this case that it is this tag that was preventing the file from being correctly read and converted by Word,
and, apparently, by OpenOffice.
Pointing out that it's "mandatory" is in fact, given what the OP asked, what is besides the point. What is to the point is that removing it solves the problem.