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i can no longer open word or excel files from my email in firefox, i can in all other browsers. it started november 5, 2014

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Yesterday afternoon, out of the blue, I can no longer open word or excel documents from my gmail account in firefox browser on windows 7. I can in all other browsers. The error message is "There was a problem sending the command to the program"

Yesterday afternoon, out of the blue, I can no longer open word or excel documents from my gmail account in firefox browser on windows 7. I can in all other browsers. The error message is "There was a problem sending the command to the program"

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As a workaround, does it work to save the files first and then open them after saving?

Sometimes when Firefox has problems handing off a download to another program it is caused by a corrupted settings file. That file is hard to edit, so usually we suggest renaming the file to see whether that resolves the issue. Here's how:

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
  • (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
  • type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders.

Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit, either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
  • (menu bar) File > Exit

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup, then rename mimeTypes.rdf to something like mimeTypes.old

Start Firefox back up again and test your Gmail attachments. Any improvement?

Note: This resets some preferences to their defaults, such as which PDF viewer Firefox uses. If you need to update that again, please see this article: View PDF files using Firefox’s built-in viewer.

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Try to redo the default browser setting and temporarily set another browser as the default browser.