How does IE choose a Word application?

[Guest]

Hi,

This is an odd ball scenario I'm sure. I've got a .Net web page that
streams an XML Word document from memory. The customer didn't want to pay to
upgrade their Word 2000 software to Word 2003, so they have installed the
Word 2003 Viewer on the side. They didn't need edit capability so the viewer
was acceptable. The problem is that when the document is opened by IE, it is
displaying it using Word 2000 so the end users see a big XML string instead
of the formatted document. Is there a way to force IE to use the Word 2003
Viewer? Here is my code for this, I'm hoping that it is just a simple change
to the ContentType or something.

Response.ContentType = "application/msword"
Response.Write(xmlDoc.OuterXml)
Response.Flush()

 

[clintonG]

I don't believe the MIME Type (application/msword) supports versioning so
the version on the desktop will launch. You're going to have to get tricky
and put the file into their file system which they can do using File > Save
where it can then be viewed using the viewer. But I would go to somewhere
like news://microsoft.public.office.developer.smarttags to discuss this with
developers who work with Office regularly.


<%= Clinton Gallagher
METROmilwaukee (sm) "A Regional Information Service"
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
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URL http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/