I recently bought a Motif XS7.  I have been using MO6, MO8 for years, and more recently a MOXF8.  On all of those I have been able to program and use “hole in the middle” type Zones for external midi in Master mode by having the Note Limit Low set higher than the Note Limit High.  On the Motif XS7 I cannot get it to work.  It looks the same, but it’s not sending any midi notes from the regions above and below the “hole”.  As soon as I set the Note Limit Low lower than the Note Limit High, it works fine.  But, that’s not how I need it to be.  Anyone know why this might be happening?

I have both an XS6 and an XF6. The “hole” works correctly on both for Elements of a Voice, or Parts of a Performance or a sequence. However, I’m experiencing the same thing you are when a “hole” is set up in Master mode and the Zone Switch is “on”. No notes play internally, and no MIDI data is sent externally, either above or below the “hole” (and yes, the Int and Ext Transmit Switches are both checked/on). The screen display seems to indicate correctly - that is, there’s a white area where the Note Limits overlap, and it’s colored to either side of that. That’s the case for both my XS and XF.

If you have spare zones, you can effectively do what you want by using two zones instead of one. Set one to limit the high notes, and the other to limit the low notes, leaving an area that neither covers to create the “hole”.

I might be missing something, so if anyone has gotten this to work using a single zone, please explain how.

I’m glad to hear it’s not just me.  I saw everything exactly as you stated.  In fact, seeing the little keyboard in the display with the blue areas highlighted below and above the “hole” made me think that I must just be doing something else wrong.  It worked great on my MO’s and MOXF8.  Ironically, the Motif XS has 8 Zones in Master mode, and I’m used to only having 4.  So, it will be easy enough to use 2 Zones to accomplish this. 
But, it still seems like it should work .......

To add to the confusion, this support article…
http://www.motifator.com/index.php/support/view/understanding_motif_xs_master_mode
...states, in the ZONE Templates section:
If the “Note Limit Low” is set higher than the “Note Limit High” a region in the middle will active and notes above and below this region will we silent. This can be useful in some instances to create special regions of play and no-play.
Ignoring apparent typos, that seems to indicate operation would be opposite to what might be expected. (A support article for the XF uses identical wording. See http://www.motifator.com/storage/support/XF_MasterMode.pdf) Nevertheless, actual operation doesn’t seem to be that way, either.