IE8 Downloading docx Files As zip On Apache

23rd January 2012 - 3 minutes read time

I recently built a Drupal site on an Apache server setup and everything seemed fine until someone running IE8 tried to download a .docx file. For some reason IE8 insisted that this file was a .zip file and would open it as such, causing a bit of confusion as to what the problem was. I assumed that this was due to the mime type of the file not being set properly, but I decided to do a quick search to see if I could find anything to corroborate this. I thought it might be something odd that IE8 was doing as everything else was downloading the file perfectly.

After wading through multiple support forums and finding very little of any help I eventually gave up and went with my first hunch and set the mime type for the .docx file extension in the sites .htaccess file. Here is the rule I used:

AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document docx

This solved the problem right away. To cover my bases for any future idiocy from IE8 I thought it might be good to set up some other mime types for Microsoft Office files. Here is the final list:

AddType application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12 .docm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document docx
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template dotx
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12 potm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template potx
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.addin.macroEnabled.12 ppam
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12 ppsm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow ppsx
AddType application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12 pptm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation pptx
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.addin.macroEnabled.12 xlam
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12 xlsb
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12 xlsm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet xlsx
AddType application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12 xltm
AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template xltx

Just drop this into your .htaccess file or your mime.types file to get IE8 to correctly download the files.

Apache

Comments

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was going through the same situation with all the other websites proving no help to sort the issue, they just wanted you to update browsers - which doesn't help web developers at all.

Submitted by Gstar on Thu, 08/02/2012 - 04:30

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As you may already know, putting a list of all MS Office types is a bear. Thanks for doing all the heavy lifting.

Submitted by Claude on Tue, 12/18/2012 - 16:22

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Thank you :-) Worked like a charm!

Submitted by Marie on Fri, 05/24/2013 - 07:32

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