Serving a dynamically generated MS Excel files using django and xlwt fails in Internet Explorer

Question

I am trying to use xlwt to create MS-Excel files from the contents of the database on my django site.

I have seen several solutions here on stackoverflow, in particular this link: django excel xlwt

and this django snippet: http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/2233/

These examples work in firefox, but not in Internet Explorer. Instead of getting prompted to open or save a file, a bunch of wingding junk appears on the screen. It seems that IE thinks the response is html.

Here is my view function:

def exportexcel(request):
    from xlwt import Workbook

    wb = Workbook()
    ws = wb.add_sheet('Sheetname')
    ws.write(0, 0, 'Firstname')
    ws.write(0, 1, 'Surname')
    ws.write(1, 0, 'Hans')
    ws.write(1, 1, 'Muster')

    fname = 'testfile.xls'
    response = HttpResponse(mimetype="application/ms-excel")
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=%s' % fname

    wb.save(response)

    return response

I am seeing this behavior in IE 8.

Any suggestions as to why this isn't working in Internet Explorer?

Thanks.

wow, that was fast and it worked. Thank you. Can you explain what 'vnd' does? — sequoia
– sequoia, Commented May 16, 2011 at 23:04

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:29:40Z

4

The mimetype you're using application/ms-excel is invalid for .xls files.

The standard one is application/vnd.ms-excel

Look here Setting mime type for excel document for more informations.

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:29

CommunityBot

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answered May 16, 2011 at 23:08

manji

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1 Comment

EricLaw Over a year ago

Nevertheless, the Content-Disposition header should have resulted in a Save prompt. OP should use Fiddler to look at the HTTP response headers to make sure that the header was being sent.

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