CSV files and IE

Today I spent about three hours to play with “extremely practical and user friendly” interface of WinXP. The problem was that Windows is too smart (at least for me). It tries to foresee your desires. But as result you wast your time to switch off next “intelligent” feature. In my case I heed to download CSV file from site supported IE only. But IE opens that file in browser window with Excel, corrupted its data. Finally I found solution:

  • Open Control Panel
  • Open Folder Options
  • Click File Types
  • Locate “CSV” and click the Advanced button
  • Check the box that says “Confirm open after download”
  • Do the same for “XLS Microsoft Excel Worksheet” as well
  • Click Ok

It was amazing. I checked Alan Simpson’s Windows XP Bible and O’Reilly – Fixing Windows XP Annoyances but without luck. Maybe that issue so trivial that everybody knows how to solve it. Anyway, once again I saw that Windows is not my choice!

Published by

Michael Stepanov

Site owner and admin :)

2 thoughts on “CSV files and IE”

  1. You know… don’t hurry to blame WinXP for being over-intelligent. I just tried this on my PC and IE7 asked me what to do with the file – Open or Save? The only reason why it would be openning CSV files without asking – would be if someone jose Open and unchecked that nice box “Always ask”.

  2. Sure, the check box ‘Always ask’ can be found easily the first time. But if it was unchecked once you may spend a lot of time trying find the way to check it again. This is very-very user-“friendly” GUI 🙂

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