docx files in websites?

[JW]

I was asked to upload a docx file from MS Office 2007 to a website, linking
to it from a webpage. The MS Word file was preferred over converting to a
pdf, so that viewers could open, save and edit the file. With the file on
the server, however, it is treated as a zip file. Efforts to open the
document open a zip folder instead. I guess I can "save as" an older Word
version, then upload it, but is this typical behavior of a .docx file? BTW,
I'm trying to open it on a computer that does not have Office2007, but has
the converter utility for .docx files from MS support website. I do not
experience similar problems when the document is local. Thanks for your
feedback.
JW

 

[Mike Mueller]

You may be able to get better support if an Office NG than here.
Office 2007 added new file types which are all in the openxml format and are
indeed ZIP files.

You may be able to bridge the difficulties that are occuring with these
documents by having the sites webmaster add the MIME types for the various
MS Office new file types to the server. The extensions to add are:
docx, xlsx, and pptx
The correct MIME type for these are all
application/vnd.openxmlformats

-Mike

 

[JW]

Thanks for the feedback. I cross-posted to an Office ng.

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

Did you verify that the file isn't actually a zip file? There's a reason
that Word documents are often placed into .zip files. If an IE user clicks
on a link to a Word document, IE will open the document within IE itself and
not within Word. The typical recommendation is to place the document in a
..zip file so that it will be downloaded properly since IE won't open a zip
file automatically since it isn't an "Active Document" that can be plugged
into the browser.

Hope this helps,
Mark Fitzpatrick
Microsoft MVP - Expression

 

[Mike Mueller]

Mark,

Word along with the other mainstay office 2007 programs(excluding Access)
are all using an Open XML structure, and actually are zipped files

 

[JW]

Thanks, Mark. I got some feedback from the Office ng. Like Mike posted, the
docx files are actually zip folders. What's confusing me is that when I test
it locally on my hard drive, clicking on the link opens the Word document
file with no problems. When I upload it and click on the document link, I
get the zipped folder rather than the Word document. I'm looking into the
MIME extensions issue on the server, to see if perhaps that's the problem.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

FYI: If you change the mime type on the server for "zip", then all "zip" files may open in Word for
users on the web site.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage
http://www.Ecom-Data.com
==============================================

 

[Mike Mueller]

Thomas

The suggestion I gave was to add the MIME type for DOCX, and not ZIP.

I did it on my developement site, and it is working for me in IE & FF-
Tested on Vista Biz w/Office 2007
Tested on XP Pro w/Word 2007 Viewer
Sample Document--> http://lfd.lannonfire.com/forums/FP-NG/Word-Document.docx

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

Ok, however you indicated that the extension was .zip

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage
http://www.Ecom-Data.com
==============================================

 

[Mike Mueller]

I guess I may have worded that poorly-
*** The extensions to add are:
*** docx, xlsx, and pptx
*** The correct MIME type for these are all
*** application/vnd.openxmlformats

All of those file types are actually zip files, but they do not use a zip
extension. You can use a zip extracter (winzip, 7zip, etc) to extract the
xml documents that make up the document. That word document expands to 5
folders and 11 files

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

Mike,

Thanks for the clarification!

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage
http://www.Ecom-Data.com
==============================================