274087 - Incorrect MIME type associated with MS-Excel (.xls) files when attached to a message

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[davesresume]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910

Microsoft Excel files sent to a recipient as an attachment are not decodable by
the recipient.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1) Thunderbird 0.73 or 1.0 - bug reproducable.
2) Compose a message to *someone*.
3) Attach a Microsoft Excel file with a .xls extension
4) Send the message...

5) When the recipient receives it, it shows up as a generic file.  No extension,
and can't be opened by Excel.

If I log in to my POP3 mailserver and look at the message, I note that the
header has the file encoded in BASE64 (no problem), but the related info for the
MIME type is "application/msexcell"

I believe the MIME type is incorrect, and should be "application/ms-excel".

The workaround for now is to shove the .xls file into a .zip file and send the
.zip as an attachment...  Then the receiver can get the file, unzip it, and pull
the .xls out of it...  But that's a royal pain...

I've looked at the RDFtypes file - nothing in there.
Actual Results:  
File was sent to the recipient, couldn't decode it.  File shows up as just the
filename without the .xls extension

Expected Results:  
It should have sent the file to the recipient with the correct filetype so it
could be decoded upon reception.

Standard theme.  WinXP Home...

Comment 1

[Jeongkyu Kim]

Hello davesresume,

On Windows, if content type is not available in pre-defined entries, thunderbird
takes it from windows registry by extension. In the case of excel, it is
supposed to come from 'Content Type' value in 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/.xls/'. Would
you check if your registry setup is correct?

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Reporter (davesresume) -- did comment 1 address your problem?  If so, please 
mark this bug   Resolved | WorksForMe.  If not, please provide the information 
of just what the MIME type *is* that's associated with .xls in the Windows 
registry.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

No response from reporter  =>  WFM
Feel free to reopen, but if you do so, provide a response to comment 1 & 2.