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Suddently yesterday all file types are downloaded as "attachment.ashx" instead of pdf or doc or whatever.

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  • Paskiausią atsakymą parašė Dimas

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I've been using Firefox for many months to access my work email using Outlook Web Access (OWA). Clicking on an attachment always resulted in the file being downloaded intact (mostly pdfs and Word docs). Suddenly yesterday all file types result in the download of "attachment.ashx". I had not changed anything in Firefox. I restarted Ff and then my computer without effect. I then deleted and reinstalled Ff -- no change. Now in the applications window pdfs and docs aren't listed, but I can't get them in there anyway because they don't download as such. I am using Ff 8.0 on MacOS 10.6.8.

I've been using Firefox for many months to access my work email using Outlook Web Access (OWA). Clicking on an attachment always resulted in the file being downloaded intact (mostly pdfs and Word docs). Suddenly yesterday all file types result in the download of "attachment.ashx". I had not changed anything in Firefox. I restarted Ff and then my computer without effect. I then deleted and reinstalled Ff -- no change. Now in the applications window pdfs and docs aren't listed, but I can't get them in there anyway because they don't download as such. I am using Ff 8.0 on MacOS 10.6.8.

Chosen solution

Further investigation has shown that Outlook Web Access was only fixed for Chrome (in Exchange 2010 SP1), but not for Firefox (so it's sending different responses to different browsers, and still sends broken content to Firefox).

I encourage people affected to this to open a Support Case at Microsoft while the Firefox team looks into the best way to improve the situation within Firefox.

Skaityti atsakymą kartu su kontekstu 👍 8

All Replies (15)

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I also started having the same problem yesterday and tried doing the exact same things as mentioned in the original post, however, I am using Ff.8.0 on Windows XP.

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Try to delete the mimeTypes.rdf file in the Firefox Profile Folder.

  • Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Open Containing Folder
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I have had the same problem for the last few days for pdf, word and powerpoint documents. I found out that if when i'm prompted to save the file onto my computer and I change the name from "attachment" to "example.pdf" or "example.docx" or "example.pptx" then it saves the file as a pdf, word or powerpoint document respectfully instead of ".ashx". I hope this helps!

Modified by IthinkIgetit

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I did delete the "mimeTypes.rdf" file and emptied the trash, and this did not help. I have discovered that zip files download properly.

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Thank you. Unfortunately, when I click on the attachment, I am not prompted to save the file; instead, I simply get Ff's dialogue box saying that I've elected to open "attachment.ashx" and do I want to open it or save it. There is also the checkbox to indicate whether or not to always do this for the same file type.

Furthermore, when I control-click the attachment, I do not see the option to save or download the *file* -- all the options are for the *link*. It appears that Ff doesn't recognize the file as a file, only a link. If I select "Save link as…" and rename the "file" it still doesn't download as a file.

I should have noted that I can connect to the same account using Safari and the files download quite normally.

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I have had exactly the same issues as of Friday when firefox 8.0 was installed. I have Windows 7 OS. I have 2 e-mails, one personal that I access through Outlook and everything opens up fine. As soon as I try and open attachments with any work files through Outlook Web App they all come up as attachment.ashx and cannot open any Microsoft document. The JPEGS come up as these files too but will open when double click - just not save. The added complexity is that a work collegue (our IT person) doesn't have any issues and he has firefox 8.0 too.

Can anyone help please?

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I am also having this issue... I also deleted the mimeTypes.rdf and it did not fix the problem. I'm not 100% sure but this might have started happening when I installed FF8.

This is extremely frustrating as I have to rename every single download manually and it is wasting a ton of time, so If anyone has any Idea whatsoever on how to fix this it would be very much appreciated.

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FF8.0 has issues. I reverted back to FF7.0.1 and the issues I've been having have gone away. I downloaded FF7.0.1 from this website: http://www.top10download.com/mozilla-firefox-7 Hope this helps...

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This is a known bug in Outlook Web Access. AFAIU it is fixed with service pack 14.1 (see <https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41308#c30>).

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If it is a bug in the OWA software does that mean it is impossible for me to fix it? or can I do anything on my end to fix it? I read thru the link you attached and it talked about a service pack update, but i wasn't sure if the client needs the update or if the server needs to be updated.

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My understanding is that the server needs to be updated. In the meantime it would be helpful if you could check which server version it is that you're using (I think inspecting the HTTP response header fields will show the OWA version).

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To clarify the above: you should talk to the administrator of your Outlook Web Access (usually your workplace IT department) and ask that they update. This bug has been fixed in OWA... The broken behavior worked in Firefox 7 and earlier because of an underlying Firefox bug that we've fixed in 8. Unfortunately, the fix needs to be applied on the server side.

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Hi Cww,

I have the same problem when I update my Firefox 8.0. Could you details, how to fix at the server side?

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Chosen Solution

Further investigation has shown that Outlook Web Access was only fixed for Chrome (in Exchange 2010 SP1), but not for Firefox (so it's sending different responses to different browsers, and still sends broken content to Firefox).

I encourage people affected to this to open a Support Case at Microsoft while the Firefox team looks into the best way to improve the situation within Firefox.

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Firefox 9.0 will revert the 8.0 changes, waiting for a definitive fix from Microsoft: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=703015