Is your docx file turning into a zip? - SOLUTION

[notaprogrammer]

I've been having the same problem with .docx files attached to emails and being saved as un-openable zip files. I am absolutely not computer-savvy. I use IE8 and Windows 7. Please explain this fix in a way I could follow - or suggest a site that would have it. This would save a lot of grief. thanks very much

[Sachin Sharma]

Hi Sam,
i am facing the same problem in CFML. i am able to upload office 2007 file but for download when i click on hyperlink in IE it opens a zip file with lots of xml files. i thing i noticed is that when i mouse over the link it shows file name with proper extension (docx or xlsx).

is your problem resolved? plz let me know if u hav any idea?

-Sachin

[Kasmar]

Just had a customer with this problem of not being able to download .xlsx and .pptx files from webmail the correct way. They were downloading as .zip. He was able to download .docx though. Tested his web account on my computer and it worked for me to download his attachments from his email.

So since it did not seem to be a server problem in this situation I tried to find the differences on the computers. He was running IE8 and I was running IE7 both on Windows XP.

After uninstalling the IE8 upgrade from his computer he was able to download the attachments the right way.

[philsou]

I have been experiencing the same issue when downloading docx files with Internet Explorer and getting zip files.
Does anyone know if there is an article from Microsoft documenting this issue or if they are going to fix it?

Thanks!

[BCsolutions]

Line 1 in the code should be?
AddType application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12 docm
with no . in front of the file extension name
This code also worked for me...Thank you very much!

So yeah, to make this work in apache, throw up a file called .htaccess in the web root of whatever site you want to change and throw this crap in it:

AddType application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12 .docm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document docx
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template dotx
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12 potm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template potx
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.addin.macroEnabled.12 ppam
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12 ppsm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow ppsx
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12 pptm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation pptx
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.addin.macroEnabled.12 xlam
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12 xlsb
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12 xlsm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet xlsx
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12 xltm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template xltx

and it'll work. thanks to the op! been looking for that for a while!

[bradclif]

For apache2:

/etc/mime.types

application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12 .docm
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document docx
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template dotx
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12 potm
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template potx
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.addin.macroEnabled.12 ppam
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12 ppsm
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow ppsx
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12 pptm
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation pptx
application/vnd.ms-excel.addin.macroEnabled.12 xlam
application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12 xlsb
application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12 xlsm
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet xlsx
application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12 xltm
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template xltx

For Apache2.2 users still having issues after adding the mime types listed above, read on.

We're running Apache2.2 on Windows Server 2003. Most users are using IE v6+. The IE users were having the same problems with a new .pptx file.

When I checked conf/mime.types, the mime types were already in the file. However, I saw that the "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint" entry only contained the ppt, pps, and pot extensions. Adding the pptx extension fixed the problem.

To avoid future problems with other Office file types, I modified the following conf/mime.types entries as follows:

application/msword	       doc docx dot dotx
application/vnd.ms-excel       xls xlsx xlm xla xlc xlt xltx xlw
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint  ppt pptx pps ppsx pot potx potx sldx

[alleybj]

if you save the docx document as a zip file and then change the extension from .zip to .docx it magically turns it into a word document; to change the file extension, you have to go into control panel and folder options and uncheck the box that says hide extensions

[ugwings]

Thanks for the tip, this was very helpful. By the way I placed these apache mime types directly in the mime.types file for Apache config and worked just as well (Removed the add statement word at the front).

[whitegrim]

I am new to programming and having somewhat similar problem. I am using Opencart ecommerce for selling documents. However, there is a problem. When customer purchases documents which can be doc, docx, ppt, pptx, xls, xlsx, zip, rar etc. The problem is that whenever they are clicked to download "application/octet-stream" pops up to save whether it is doc or docx or even zip!!! However this issue is only with Mozilla as everything works fine in Chrome and IE. Anyone can help me here!!!

[vishwanat_rr]

Hi there

I have mentioned the mime type in my apache under /etc/mime.types
still it did not work as expected

Interestingly it works in some of the IE8 browsers but not all

Does the order matters in /etc/mime.types ?

And IE8 with windows 7 OS, the docx opens with type as XML ..

Any suggestions

[n03]

I had this problem, my aplication was made on java and the web server was jetty, but i think that with this solution it doent mater about the web server, the only thing that you hava to do is add this lines on your web.xml :


<mime-mapping>
<extension>docx</extension>
<mime-type>application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document</mime-type>
</mime-mapping>

<mime-mapping>
<extension>xlsx</extension>
<mime-type>application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet</mime-type>
</mime-mapping>

I hope this help us, because i was searching for this solution.

[shaamesamander]

Thanks mcupples. This worked for me on Oracle Application Server.

[juliev]

THANKS to Discorax and MCupples for starting and adding to this post. It was great to find a solution to such a weird problem.

[wgchapel]

Thanks Bradclif et al. That worked a charm!

[aswani_a2006]

docx opens as zip using ie8 - Just change the extension of .zip to the appropriate ms-office doc extension(for example ....change .zip to .docx) shall work.

Control Panel -> Tools -> Folder Options -> View -> uncheck "Hide extensions of known file types".

This shall work for all MS-Office docs.