downloading web archive files

An Excel file is not a web archive. If you download the file to your Desktop, you need to open it with Excel, Numbers (part of iWork), OpenOffice, or NeoOffice.

Mulder

This might be a problem with the way the server where the Excel file is hosted is identifying the file type (the MIME type).

Is it possible to download the Excel file by Control-clicking on the link and choosing "Download Linked File"? If so, try that. It sounds like Safari is trying to open the file rather than download it, and Safari can't open Excel files. If you can download it, find the file on your hard drive and make sure it has the .xls extension at the end (change the extension if necessary) and then try opening with Excel.

(Mulder, I don't think toiboi thinks these are web archives. It is Safari that is identifying it as such when it tries to open them, which is probably due to incorrect MIME types on the hosting server.)

toiboi wrote:
That is what confuses me. I have it downloaded onto my desktop. It is an Excel file and it opens.
However, the content is garbage except for the message about my web browser not being capable of dealing with web archive files.
The web site I downloaded it from is: www.ntiadtv.gov/coupon_stats.cfm
The download is: coupon statistics by state

That opens in Excel for me with a bunch of code, too. (Just for what it's worth, it's not actually garbage. It's code that might work in a program that supports it. But it is most definitely not a standard Excel file.)

It's not just you. It's also not a Safari issue, and as far as I can tell, it's a problem with the file itself. It's simply messed up. 😉

Edit: Ah, I see the message you mentioned in the file:

This document is a Web archive file. If you are seeing this message, this means your browser or editor doesn't support Web archive files. For more information on the Web archive format, go to http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/office/webarchive.htm.

Which takes you to a page to order Microsoft Office. Fabulous. I suspect this is a Windows-only format. A little more poking around will get at the root of that, I'm sure ...

Message was edited by: Rachel R

I'd click on the Contact Us link on the site and let them know the link for that file claims it's an Excel file, but if you open it, it claims it's a Web Archive file. You can't have both claims be true at the same time, so they need to actually put valid .xls files (not HTML/Web Archive files) with the data at those links.

Mulder

toiboi wrote:
I see. At least it isn't just me or my computer.
If you have any other thoughts (or if anyone does) I do appreciate the help.

I tried the same web site and file download in Windows XP with Internet Explorer 7 and got exactly the same results. I'm thinking it's simply a malformed file. I believe it's an Excel file that was exported as HTML but given an .xls extension by mistake.

That said, I opened the code in a text editor, fixed a couple of things, and found the actual content. This won't help anyone else so I'd still recommend contacting the webmasters to let them know about this problem ... But below is my copy of the actual page content that I think you're looking for. Of course, be aware that I can't vouch for the information given.

http://home.comcast.net/~rmrshop/CouponCountsbyState.html