Why does MSWord2007 not accept my changes to a .dotm file?

Accord开发者_开发技巧ing to the notes on office .dotm files, they are similar (or the same) in structure to the .docx files - in other words a zip archive.

If I extract the contents of a .dotm file (using an archiving tool), and then recompress the resulting files back into a .dotm file, preserving the structure (file locations) exactly - MSWord2007 complains that the new .dotm file is invalid.

What additional formatting (in detail) for .dotm files is required that the archiving tool does not (by default) or cannot provide?

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Used a tool called 'Infozip' - which consisted of several executables (zip.exe, unzip.exe, etc) to implement a working solution.

[-] Extracted the contents of the .dotm file to a temporary folder using unzip.exe [-] Made the required changes to relevant files (in this case CustumUI.xml) [-] Updated the original archive (.dotm file) by instructing zip.exe to 'refresh' the archive - i.e. NOT recompress to a new archive, but update changed files only.

This seemed to keep the non-standard archive metadata intact while changing the contents of the desired file within the archive. MS Word 2007 now opens the macro-enabled template files and applies the changes correctly.