[deanhills]

here is the page with helpful instructions on importing data into a wordpress site.
https://wordpress.org/support/article/im...g-content/

Now this is how i was thinking. Even if it fails midway, your site db might have partial data loaded. So is there even some of the data you are trying to import, on your site somewhere, even after a failed attempt ?

If not then it is not even beginning. then may be the data xml is corrupt or not properly formatted. Why don't you install locally and experiment some to find out whats up.

Do you know what version was loaded when the xml file was created? Have you tried an earlier version of WordPress?

I have a feeling that the xml backup must have been created before 5.0 version and 5.0 is so different from before that maybe it spontaneously doesn't want to except the old xml import.

Here is a link to the earlier versions of WordPress:

https://wordpress.org/download/releases/

It has the dates against the releases, so maybe you could work out when the xml could have been created and use that release. You can then always upgrade WordPress immediately after.