Link Help Needed

247SiteAlert's picture

They have: 18 posts

Joined: Oct 2007

I'm using some links on my website for .txt and .xls file extensions. When I click on one of the links I get two different things:

1. for the .txt the file opens in a browser window.

2. the .xls popsup a open/sav dialog - I click on open and it opens in a browser window.

What I want is the open/save dialog in both cases and then when I click on Open I want my windows default app to open the file - such as Excel for the .xls file.

How is this done?

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JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

247sitealert wrote: 2. the .xls popsup a open/sav dialog - I click on open and it opens in a browser window.

Doesn't it open in a browser window, using Excel? A Web browser can't open an .xls file by itself. Smiling

Am presuming what you need is for the file to open outside of the Web browser? Haven't got a clue how to do this offhand, it should be an option in the Web browser somewhere. If you can't find it, and really hate that behaviour, you could just switch browser. Smiling

a Padded Cell our articles site!

He has: 629 posts

Joined: May 2007

To get the .txt file to open the "Save/Open" dialog, you need to change the MIME type for .txt files to Content-Type: application/octet-stream. How you do this depends very much on the host site setup. If you have a control panel, you can probably set it from there. Look for something like "Manage MIME types".

With respect to the "Open" action, you have no control at all over this. The action depends on the visitor's browser settings, as well as what software is installed. For example, I will be unable to open your .xls file in Excel because I do not have Excel installed on my computer.

Cordially, David
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delete from internet where user_agent="MSIE" and version < 8;

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