Download Excel from IE on OS X
Somebody please help!!!!
We have just switched over from OS 9 and Netscape to OS X and Internet Explorer. I have a page on the internet explorer that creates a text file. Then there is another link on that page that will open excel and give me a list of text files to open through excel. The problem is some text file links are selectable and some are not. There is no common thread between any of these. Such as who owns them, permissions and create date. Another odd thing is that if I just open the directory where the text file is stored I can open any of the text files. Any ideas on preferences or anything would be greatly helpfull. Or if you have an sites I could reference.
We have just switched over from OS 9 and Netscape to OS X and Internet Explorer. I have a page on the internet explorer that creates a text file. Then there is another link on that page that will open excel and give me a list of text files to open through excel. The problem is some text file links are selectable and some are not. There is no common thread between any of these. Such as who owns them, permissions and create date. Another odd thing is that if I just open the directory where the text file is stored I can open any of the text files. Any ideas on preferences or anything would be greatly helpfull. Or if you have an sites I could reference.
Comments
Originally posted by murk
You've lost me, but have you tried any other browsers? Safari? Mozilla? Netscape?
I don't have a choice on the browser. This is with work.
I can try and explain again. There is a website that has a link to download and open an excel worksheet. When I select this link I get a bunch of garbage and no excel worksheet. This worked when we were on OS 9 and used Netscape. Another change is that we changed our server box. The fun with this is that there are three changes at once so the problem could be with any of them. Any suggestions on settings and such?
2) Ctrl-click on the link instead of just clicking it, and select 'Save link as...', which will download the file to wherever you specify. Then open it.
3) Sounds like the server is not associating the Excel files with the proper MIME type. If that makes no sense, just forward it to whoever is running your server, and hopefully it will to them.
Originally posted by hawley
I don't have a choice on the browser. This is with work.
I can try and explain again. There is a website that has a link to download and open an excel worksheet. When I select this link I get a bunch of garbage and no excel worksheet. This worked when we were on OS 9 and used Netscape. Another change is that we changed our server box. The fun with this is that there are three changes at once so the problem could be with any of them. Any suggestions on settings and such?
First off, you can use any browser that you want, including Netscape, Safari, Mozilla, Firefox, and numerous others. I gather that the web page that you access has links to files on the server that you want to open in Excel. Since you did not give us access to the web site, we cannot test things out. However, my best guess is for you to download a sample file, do a Get Info... on it, press the Opens with pop-up menu, select Excel, and then press Change all.... If you insist on using Internet Explorer, within Internet Explorer you may go to Explorer > Preferences. Scroll down to Receiving Files > File Helpers. Add the extension of the file that you are trying to open. Choose Excel as the helper application.
Originally posted by murk
Smarter people than me have come to the rescue. (I hope) The Web Standards Project also recommends dumping Explorer, even the still alive Windows version. http://browsehappy.com/
And just to add the "still alive Windows version" is only alive to those running Windows XP. There are many people still using lesser versions of Windows, all of which will not receive the newer IE releases which strive to be more secure and standards-compliant.
1. I tried Safari and got the same results.
2. CTL + click on the link and download it worked. It downloaded a file that looked like a plain sheet of paper but when I opened in excel it worked fine. The only thing is I don't want my doing it this way. The reason is because everytime we make a change to the excel template they would have to download a new version. The way we have it now they don't need to do anything when we make a change.
3. The file helpers on the preferences have .xlt so I don't think that was it, unless I am missing something.
4. The MIME type. I saw something on the MAC with MIME and it had .xlt. Not sure if this is what you were refering to or not, but if not let me know.
I think this covered everything that was suggested. I am going to try and detail a little more of the process. I would love to show you the web page but it is on a secure page through work and can not.
I have a perl script on a sun server that creates web pages for me. The user, who works on a MAC, would select the link they want and recieve two options. Either create a text file(to be used when the excel program is open) or open the excel report right away. When they opt to open the report a .xlt file will get FTPed down from the sun server to their desktop where it should automatically open. Although instead of downloading excel, excuting the template, and seeing the report like it worked on OS 9 and our old server they get a bunch of garbage on the web page. It doesn't even download to the desktop.
I was doing some other research on a text file issue I have and saw that OS X does not recognize file extensions only file type and creator. If this is the case would this be my problem. It doesn't understand what to download and open? If so is there a script in perl that I can change the file type and creator so that when it goes to download the file it knows what to open.
Any other suggestions or help would be great.
Thanks!!!!
Originally posted by hawley
Thanks for the suggestions. Some worked some didn't. Although I am still looking for another solution.
1. I tried Safari and got the same results.
2. CTL + click on the link and download it worked. It downloaded a file that looked like a plain sheet of paper but when I opened in excel it worked fine. The only thing is I don't want my doing it this way. The reason is because everytime we make a change to the excel template they would have to download a new version. The way we have it now they don't need to do anything when we make a change.
3. The file helpers on the preferences have .xlt so I don't think that was it, unless I am missing something.
4. The MIME type. I saw something on the MAC with MIME and it had .xlt. Not sure if this is what you were refering to or not, but if not let me know.
Nope.
Web servers map files to MIME types so that the receiving client knows what to do with the data. If there's no MIME type, the client generally just treats it as text, and attempts to display it in the browser... in other words, that Excel file is going to come out as gibberish.
Your web server is not properly tagging the data as an Excel file, so any browser is going to do the same thing.
IE on Windows may have special code to detect and handle MS application data (wouldn't surprise me), for situations where the webmaster has screwed up.
I was doing some other research on a text file issue I have and saw that OS X does not recognize file extensions only file type and creator.
Wrong. OS X looks for a filetype/creator, if one isn't found, it uses the file extension. OS *9* ignored the file extension.
The problem is almost assuredly on your web server.