103863 - Opening an attachment received fails to open installed app.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect, P3)

Description

[Stephane Saux]

When I double click on the attachment, I get a dialog asking me whether I want
to open it using excel, or save it to disk.
I chose to open it using excel, and what I got was the same dialog, but the
excel part was not recognized anymore, and the document was not opened.

Comment 1

[Stephane Saux]

Attachment: second dialog I go when trying to open attachment using excell

Comment 2

[Tiantian Kong]

Trix:

Please can you try to repro this? Thx.

Comment 3

[Tiantian Kong]

Marking P3, since many tests of sending and opening EXCEL attachment has been 
successful.

Comment 4

[Stephane Saux]

Attachment: screenshot of dialog resulting from double clicking on the email sent from s/mapi

Comment 5

[Stephane Saux]

Here are the steps to reproduce:
Open an excel document.
select file->send to->email recipient.
Send it to yourself (using n6)
go to your inbox.
open the message.
Double click on the attachment.
The dialog attached above shows up.

Comment 6

[lchiang]

TianTian - should find out which version of Excel is at fault here.

Stephane - which version of Excel do you have?  I'm going to send you an excel
spreadsheet.  Are you able to double click on it to launch/open the spreadsheet
in excel?   If yes, save this file to your system.  Then, open it in Excel and
try to send it via MAPI to me and to yourself.  See if it launches again from
the mail msg.

Comment 7

[Stephane Saux]

Attachment: My version of excel

Comment 8

[Stephane Saux]

Attachment: Dialog resulting from double clicking on excel doc attached to Lisa Chiang's email to me.

Comment 9

[Stephane Saux]

Attachment: attachement pane from Lisa Chiang's email

Comment 10

[Stephane Saux]

Attachment: attachment pane from sending the same attachment after opening it from a manually selected application.

Comment 11

[lchiang]

I think it's ok to have the dialog come up.  We don't automatically launch
Excel.  I believe this was the behavior as in 6.1.  In all of the attachments I
sent to Stephane, simple mapi was not involved.   I will forward to Esther to
take a look at Stephane's system.

Comment 12

[sol]

Stephane - if you simply send yourself an Excel spreadsheet attached to an email
message, and then retrieve the message and double click on the attachment, do
you see the same dialogs as above? In other words, is this a Simple MAPI
problem, or an attachment handling problem?

Comment 13

[esther]

Stephane, were you able to open Excel attachments using Netscape 6 before this
or was this the first time you tried.  From your original scenaio, you say it
asked if you wanted to open it using Excel.  Where was Excel mentioned?  If you
had already chosen Excel as the app throught migration or the Choose button, it
would have been mentioned in the radio button description "Open using EXCEL.EXE"
and that would have been the button selected by default.  If you hadn't set it
up then the default radio button selected would have been "Save this file to
Disk".  At that point selecting Open, then "Choose" would have asked for the
location of Excel.   

Comment 14

[Stephane Saux]

It may very well be a problem with attachment in general.  I'm able to open some
correctly and other I can't.

Comment 15

[esther]

Stephane, I would like to stop by to see the attachment/attachments that fail to
open the associated windows app.  I'll call you.

Comment 16

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

We think this is an attachment issue, isolated to Stephane undertsanding on how
this is suppose to work = PDT-

Comment 17

[esther]

Stephane - I can open the attachment you sent me and one I sent myself.  The
attachments sent by me with Excel97 have (Content Type: application/octet-stream:
name="potentialbug.XLS").   The attachment I received from you had (Content
Type: application/vnd.ms-excel; name="RootCAinfo.XLS").  Both types of
attachment gave me the default action to Open with EXCEL and worked.  In trying
to figure out why yours didn't work I edited my File type associations in
Explorer.  That's when I fail at recognizing the application/vnd.ms-excel file.
To trouble shoot I would like check out your Preference Setting for
Navigator|Helper Apps.  If you could attach a snapshot of this, then I can
determine if I need to check your Explorer File Type associations.  

Comment 18

[esther]

Also note: attachment 53140 [details] in this bug is the correct behavior.  If the user
opens a excel attachment, it opens with a randomly generated name. If user then
saves
that opened excel attachment it will save with the random name.  This is by
design, I'll find the bug that states this.

Comment 19

[Trix Supremo]

opening an excel or word doc does generate a random file name, that is
duplicatible, but saving the document saves the actual filename, both by
selecting "Save this to disk" option from the dialog box or by right mouse
clicking the attachment.  this was using 97 & 00 office on various OS's.

But this is not a Simple MAPI bug, since sending an attachment from Netscape
Mail  displays the same results.

Comment 20

[esther]

Trix, to make clear my comment regarding attachment 53140 [details] in case someone was
thinking this was a bug.  Note: from a mail msg attachment area, Open the
document generates a new name for the document when opened.  From a mail msg
attachment area, Save As...keeps the original name when saving.
If the user (Stephane did this), opens the document, then does a Send to from
the MS App, they will see the new name for the documnent in the attachment area
of the newly sent message. This is not a bug, but by design.

Comment 21

[Stephane Saux]

I checked my application mapping, and for application/vnd.ms-excel I had
"Application" checked by the application was empty.  I've manually updated my
profile to open documents of this mime type using excel.

Comment 22

[esther]

Stephane, where did you check your application mapping?  From our
Preference|Navigator|Helper Applications?   Or through the Advance Button in the
Dialog for downloading (as seen in your first screenshot).  If
"application/vnd.ms-excel" listed in the Navigator preference under Helper
Applications, I was told by the developer, the user didn't need to add that
association via the Advance button on the Downloading dialog, if Excel is
installed on the system.   We may still have a problem, but for now, can you
tell me if it works for you after adding it manually.  Taking Simple MAPI out of
the description, not a Simple MAPI issue.  Changine QA and Assigned to

Comment 23

[Stephane Saux]

Esther, Scott,
  When you earlier asked me to check the help apps mapping, I changed the
mapping in prefs->navigator->helper apps to have the full path to excel appear
in the
  After doing so, when I double click on an Excel attachment, it works as expected.
  I also then removed the path I had entered in the pref and it reverted to
detecting the attachment type properly, and yet not being able to find the excel
exec.
  I then restored the manual mapping I had added to my prefs->navigator->help
apps and it works anew.

Hope this helps. Could be a weirdness in my system.
Stephane.

Comment 24

[Stephane Saux]

Attachment: Edit type window for the Excel type (prefs->nav->helper apps->edit)

Comment 25

[Stephane Saux]

The previous attachment shows how it is now (Makes it possible for me to open
all Excel attachments)  When it doesn't work the application radio button is
checked, but the value is empty.

Comment 26

[Scott MacGregor]

Hey Stephane, thanks for experimenting with this. The "normal" user scenario for
excel should have been the following: 
1) we properly detect the mime type and show you the excel icon (works for you too)
2) when you try to open the attachment up, we sniff your windows registry to see
if excel registered itself as the application for vnd.msexcel, we discover that
excel is registered. The helper app dialog comes up with "Excel" listed under
the radio button for open attachment. User hits enter, we send the file to the
OS asking it to open the file, the OS fires up word. No user intervention
required. No need to find the path to excel, etc.

Sounds like the last part of step 2 is failing on your system. When we send the
file to the OS to be launched, excel isn't properly launching.

Can you run 'regedit' and then look up your mime type entry for excel. it should
be under: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
.xls is the key
Can you find the values for the ShellEx component of the .xls entry? 

Comment 27

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

nomianting, so we take another look at this one.

Comment 28

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

There was no comment, when this bug was marked nsbeta1. Is it because this is an
isolated case that can't be reproduced, or ...?

Comment 29

[Alex Launi]

I would like to verify this bug. Running Thunderbird 1.5 On Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper. Cannot open openoffice associated (.odt, .doc) documents if openoffice is already open. Cannot open PDF files at all. Only work around is to save to desktop and then open.

Comment 30

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

no testcase and reporters' addresses are dead
=> incomplete