WD: Problems Opening Word or RTF Document From Internet Explorer (184335)

SYMPTOMS

When you click a hyperlink to open a Microsoft Word or Rich Text Formatted (RTF) file in Microsoft Internet Explorer, you may experience one of the following symptoms:

Case 1

You will not be prompted to select either the Open It or the Save To Disk option. Instead, you may receive a message indicating that the file is downloading.

Case 2

The document will be displayed incorrectly. For example, the background color of the document may be gray and you may see control characters or code similar to the following RTF codes:

   {\rtf\ansi\ansi.cpg1252\uc1\deff0\deflang
   {\rtf\ansicpg1252\uci \deff0\deflang1033\deflangfe1033

The actual text of the Word document will be interspersed amongst these codes.

NOTE: An RTF document will be displayed correctly if you open the document by clicking Open on the File menu.

Case 3

You will not see Word menus when viewing the Word or RTF document from Internet Explorer.

CAUSE

Case 1

The Confirm Open After Download option is not selected for Word documents (.doc) and RTF files.

Case 2

The Content Type/MIME setting is set to text/html rather than application/msword for Word documents (.doc) and RTF files.

Case 3

The Browse In Same Window option is selected for Word documents (.doc) and RTF files. This option displays the menus and toolbars of Internet Explorer rather than the menus and toolbars of Word.

WORKAROUND

NOTE: The following steps are for Internet Explorer version 4.0. Because there are several versions of Internet Explorer, the following steps may be different on your computer. If they are, please consult your product documentation to complete these steps.

Case 1

Select the Confirm Open After Download option by following these steps:

Double-click My Computer.
On the View menu, click Folder Options.
Click the File Types tab.
From the Registered File Types box, select Microsoft Word Document and click Edit.
In the Edit File Type dialog box, click to select the Confirm Open After Download check box and click OK.
Repeat steps 4 and 5, but select Rich Text Format from the Registered File Types list in step 4.
Click OK.

Case 2

Set the Content Type/MIME setting to application/msword by following these steps:

Double-click My Computer.
On the View menu, click Folder Options.
Click the File Types tab.
From the Registered File Types box, select Microsoft Word Document and click Edit.
From the Content Type (MIME) list, select application/msword and click OK.
Repeat steps 4 and 5, but select Rich Text Format from the Registered File Types list in step 4.
Click OK.

Case 3

Turn off the Browse In Same Window option by following these steps:

Double-click My Computer.
On the View menu, click Folder Options.
Click the File Types tab.
From the Registered File Types box, select Microsoft Word Document and click Edit.
Click to clear the Browse In Same Window check box and click OK.
Repeat steps 4 and 5, but select Rich Text Format from the Registered File Types list in step 4.
Click OK.

MORE INFORMATION

The following settings are the default file type settings for Microsoft Word documents, RTF files, and HTML documents:

                                                 Confirm Open     Browse in
                             Content Type        After Download  Same Window
   File Type                 (MIME) Setting      Setting          Setting
   --------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Microsoft Word Document   application/msword  Off              On
   Rich Text Format          application/msword  On               Not Available
   HTML Document             text/html           On               Not Available

You can access these settings by following these steps:

Double-click My Computer.
On the View menu, click Folder Options.
Click the File Types tab.
From the Registered File Types box, select the file type you want to edit and click Edit.

For additional information, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

174893 Troubleshooting In-Place Activation in Internet Explorer

162059 Office Documents Open in Internet Explorer