Another possibility occurs to me:
Most "illegal XML character" errors I've run into have been ampersands ("&"). A few have been brackets. Since it's nvarchar(max), you can:
select *
from dbo.MyTable
where MyNvarcharColumn like '%[%]%';
That will give you rows that have an ampersand in the XML. Then you'll need to fix those rows, of course.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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