IE8 issue: MS Office files download link

IE8 issue: MS Office files download link

by Prav tend -
Number of replies: 7

All.

I uploaded excel, word docs into one of my moodle course and linked these files on a webpage resource as below.

https://www.mysite.com/file.php/25/Groups010510.xls

But when the users click on the above link, windows security popup displays requesting login credentials again. The file subsequently opens when the user clicks on cancel. This is happening only with IE8. it doesnt happen with IE7 or firefox. is there any fix to this?

Thanks in advance

Attachment moodle_issue1.jpg
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In reply to Prav tend

Re: IE8 issue: MS Office files download link

by Nadav Kavalerchik -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
I saw this sad issue on one of the computers at a collage i work with.
No solution yet.

Tried to play with the http headers that were sent by the server
and it did not helped.

I guess it is a mis-recognition of the mime type by the browser.

If you could only send some bug report to MS smile
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In reply to Nadav Kavalerchik

Re: IE8 issue: MS Office files download link

by Prav tend -

Thanks Nadav!!

My company has Microsoft premier support..so i will open a ticket with them.

will let the forum know if i find any solution.

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In reply to Prav tend

Re: IE8 issue: MS Office files download link

by Pete Phillips -
Did you happen to find an answer about this? Maybe a security setting? I'm a firefox user and didn't realize it was an issue until all the students came back and this was happening across the campus. Thanks for any help!
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In reply to Prav tend

Re: IE8 issue: MS Office files download link

by Anthony DeCusati -
We just had a similar issue emerge at our institution. Here is an excerpt from one of those communications that may help others experiencing this:

This was posted in Microsoft’s KB only a couple months ago on April 23 and is identified as a “FAST PUBLISH”(information provided as-is in response to emerging issues), so this may still be an emerging issue.

I believe the username prompt is an issue caused by the integration of Internet Explorer and Word. Please see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2019105. It explains a possible cause, some client-side resolutions (look under “Method 2:Client approaches that can lessen the impact”), and links to more information. To summarize the cause listed in the article:

When Internet Explorer opens an Office document, it spawns the appropriate Office application passing the URL to the document. The Office application then will attempt to access the document directly from the server. This is different from other browsers andother file types – most browsers download the file and have the application open it from the local cache.

And the recommended client-side solutions:
  • Leaving the application open – For those wishing to retain direct-editing functionality but for whom FBA with persistent cookies are not an option, the user's can reduce the impact of multiple prompts by leaving the application open after the first access is made. By closing only the document instead of the application another document using the same application can be opened without prompting for credentials since the executable has already been authenticated. Documents of different types requiring a different application to edit them will require a prompt for each new application that needs to access the site.
  • Select "remember the password" –The credential prompts can also be less annoying if the user selects to remember the password. This should only be done if the client machine is in a private trusted environment and not used in a public machine (many corporations will set a policy that prohibits the saving of passwords). The saving of the password will not eliminate the prompt but will pre-populate it with the information so that only a single click/keystroke is needed to respond. The site should be added to the Trusted sites zone if this approach is used.

--
Anthony J. DeCusati
Learning Systems Manager
CTDLC
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In reply to Prav tend

Re: IE8 issue: MS Office files download link

by Stuart Blackhurst -

Hi

We had this issue and I found this thread useful. I would like to add our resolution. We have the setup on IIS7 and elected to disable 'WebDAV' (All updates are done by uploading the files anyway). To do this open IIS7, select either the server or the site and click the "Request Filtering". Action - Deny Verb... and enter PROPFIND. Create another for OPTIONS. I found that the server did not need a reboot and it was fixed straight away. Hope that is useful to someone.

Stuart

 

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In reply to Prav tend

Re: IE8 issue: MS Office files download link

by Thomas van den Heuvel -

I might be bumping an old topic here, but since I ran into this issue as well (in Moodle 1.7, mind, there might be more sophisticated solutions in newer versions) I might as well give a tl;dr summary of my solution here, apologies if (parts of) this entire solution was already present somewhere / stuff is not 100% accurate.

To get rid of the Windows Security popup you need to serve your file with the "Content-Disposition: Attachment" header. This can be achieved by adding ?forcedownload=1 to your file-links, or maybe hack it into the filelib if you are working with an older version of Moodle.

Yes, this will prompt the user what to do with the file (Open/Save/Save As), but at least the Windows Security popup will be gone.

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