Excel 2007 Files for Download

  • Resolved hauder

    (@hauder)


    15 years ago

    I’m trying to use my blog to share a few helpful spreadsheets I created with readers. I utilized Excel 2007 to add features and add some automatic features unavailable in prior versions of Excel.

    Issue:
    When I upload my Excel 2007 file to my blog, everything seems fine and I get a link. I then go to the page I created for my excel tools and add the name/description of the spreadsheet, highlight the text and add a link, pasting in the link I got from the Media Library upload.

    When I go out and visit the site, all seems normal, but when I click on the link, instead of opening the file, it opens a directory which appears to contain a bunch of junk related to the Excel 2007 file. I cannot figure out how to make it so that the Excelt 2007 file simply opens (yes, I have Excel 2007 installed).

    I saved the filed down to Excel 2003 format and it work fine – clicking on the download link open up the Excel spreadsheet, not a directory.

    Examples can be found at: https://www.edwardhauder.com / Excelt Tools page

    Anyone else run into this issue with Excel 2007 files? Any easy way to work around this? Am I just missing somethign really easy?

    Thanks for the help,
    Ed

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Jenny Beaumont

    (@jennybeaumont)

    Excel files aren’t necessarily designed to open in a web browser.
    from my mac, when i click on your link, it downloads the file and i can open it locally. to download from a PC (windows), a user would have to know to right-click>save as.
    depending on your goal for sharing this doc, you might want to rethink think the file format (the pdf viewer is more common to web browsers), or just indicate to users the right-click>save technique to download.

    otherwise for sharing docs online, there exist other apps (google docs, drop.io, etc) you could explore.

    hope this helps.
    cheers.

    Clayton James

    (@claytonjames)

    Office 2007 uses a .docx extension for word instead of .doc like Office 2003, and excel of course is .xlsx not .xls in most cases. The XML file extensions have changed with Office 2007. Here is the MS document explaining it. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179191.aspx

    Some browsers ( okay, just Internet Explorer ) have some difficulty interpreting what to do with those files. I visited your site using Firefox, and both the first and second files, .xls and .xlsx downloaded normally when clicked. I re-tested with IE, and only the first one .xls (office 2003) worked correctly. Internet Explorer attempted to identify and download the .xlsx (office 2007) file as a .zip extension. So I think that might be the issue.

    Some references that might help; download .xlsx as .zip internet explorer

    https://webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=162526

    alism

    (@alism)

    What jenny said. ??

    To add to that though, <2003 versions used .xls as the file extension, 2007 tend to use .xlsx, so it might also be worth double checking that the file type /program associations are correct too. Not sure how different browsers handle Excel files, but you may find it varies slightly from browser to browser too.

    Edit: bit distracted there for a few minutes… damn you Clayton for beating me to it!! And more eloquently too. Grrrr! ??

    Thread Starter hauder

    (@hauder)

    Thanks everyone for the help. I appreciate it!

    Thanks,
    Ed

    Clayton James

    (@claytonjames)

    I hate when that happens!!

    ??

    Thread Starter hauder

    (@hauder)

    Thanks Everyone.

    Special thanks to ClaytonJames- The link to the discussion on the WebDeveloper.com website was exactly on point. With it I was able to update the MIME Type on my server and get the files to open correctly! Thanks again!!

    -Ed

    Clayton James

    (@claytonjames)

    Glad it helped, Ed. I saved that link on purpose because I encountered a similar situation myself. Guess it finally came in handy!

    Best wishes.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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