I have an intranet application which allows the user to view a set of excel files created with Excel 2003. The user clicks a button, which runs window.open('http://server/path/file.xls', 'destwindow'). Running IE6 (corporate standard, sorry), my desktop pc is configured to open Excel documents in Excel (not in IE window). This all works.
I'm currently updating the excel files to include an image in the footer (a custom page footer as configured in Page Setup). This was not possible in Excel 2000 and older, but is supported in Excel 2003 and later. When I open an excel doc containing a graphic in the footer via IE, the document will open in Excel, but the graphic is removed. Any text in the footer is intact. If I download/save the document first and then open it, the graphic is intact. If I use Firefox and open directly in Excel, the graphic is intact.
I have tested this on two other machines - one has the same problem as mine, but the other can open the Excel doc from IE directly into Excel with no loss of footer.
I'm guessing that somewhere along the way, IE must be using a pre-Excel-2003 com interface to open the file, from before graphics in footers were supported, but this is just a guess, and I can't figure out where. I've compared mime-type mappings and a slew of registry keys between the machine that works and one that doesn't, and can't find any difference. We both have the same build of IE6, and the same build of Excel 2003.
Can anyone suggest a way to ensure that the file opens in Excel with the footer intact?
One other difference between my machine (doesn't work) and the one that does. Not sure if it is related, but I suspect it is. When I open an Excel doc directly from IE into Excel, the file always opens in Excel as "Book1", "Book2", etc. When I do the same on a machine that doesn't lose the footer image, it opens directly from the URL, showing the URL in the title bar, and you must use "Save a copy" in order to save the book.