ASP -> Excel

[Bryan Harrington]

Hello all.. I'm working on some reports, and have added the ability to
"download" the reports to excel. Not a big deal, fairly straight forward.
However, PHB wants to be able to create some pivot tables from said reports
(again.. no biggie) and when he goes to save the file, Excel wants to save
the file as a web page instead of and Excel spreadsheet.

Now.. I know the simple thing here is to just pick Excel from the drop down
box in the save as dialog.. but.. PHB would "prefer" to not have to do that.

Has anyone been able to jump this hurdle before? My good friend google
hasn't turned anything up. My preference is to give PHB the middle finger..
but alas.. the paycheck is keeping me from doing that.

Thanks!

 

[Ray Costanzo [MVP]]

Are you sure that this isn't just a setting in Excel for that person? Like:
Tools--Options--Transition--Save Excel files as:

Also, how are you returning the Excel file from your server? With a
response.contenttype="application/vnd.ms-excel"?

Ray at work

 

[Bryan Harrington]

Thanks for your response Ray.. Yes.. I'm adding the response.contenttype to
the header.. all that works great.

And no, it's not a setting in Excel as far as I can tell.. When I return
the excel file from ASP and save it, I can open it in notepad, and it's a
bunch of <td>data</td>'s... if I do a save as over to excel, then when you
open it in notepad you get to see all the fun ascii stuff.

PHB doesn't want to have to make that "extra" click to the drop down box to
specify save as excel. I don't think it can be done, but there are lots and
lots of smart people out there working for lots and lots of PHB's.