How do I get csv file to download on IE? Works on firefox

user_269783 0
Viewed 42292

I'm struggling with an odd error. I have a simple web app that grabs stuff from a DB then outputs it as a downloadable csv file. It works on firefox and chrome, but IE fails to recognize it as a csv file (thinking it is a html fle) and when I click save I get the error, "Unable to download {name of file} from {name of site}. Unable to open this internet site. ..."

Code: 

session_start();

//some logic goes here...  

//generate csv header  
header("Content-type: application/octet-stream");  
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=exportevent.csv");  
header("Pragma: no-cache");  
header("Expires: 0");  

echo "Event: " . $event_title . "\n";  

//print the column names  
echo "Last Name, First Name, Company \n";  

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))  
{  
    echo $row['atlname'] . ',' . $row['atfname'] . ',' . $row['atcompany'] . "\n";      
}

I've played around with the content-type a whole bunch, but that had no effect.

Update: I've tried text/csv, application/vnd.ms-excel (and variations of this), text/plain, and some others that I now forget with no luck.

This is IE8 btw.

Update 2: The connection is over SSL.

internet-explorer csv download php
12 Answers

Don't we love IE? :)

Try using those headers:

  header("Pragma: public");
  header("Expires: 0");
  header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
  header("Cache-Control: private",false);
  header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
  header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"exportevent.csv\";" );
  header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");

I think that the octet-stream content type forces IE to download the file.

user_2697840

I've had success with the following:

header("Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=File.csv");

Setting the type to application/vnd.ms-excel seemed to do the trick in my case. This is all in a file that is opened by submitting a form using 

target="_blank"
user_994010

The only extra code I had to add for IE to work with SSL was: header("Pragma: public"); So my headers look like this now:

 header("Pragma: public");  
 header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
 header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=some_filename.csv");
user_5760690

Try setting your content type to text/csv instead of application/octet-stream.

Since application/octet-stream is a generic binary mime type (and doesn't match the '.csv' extension), Internet explorer might be ignoring it and computing the mime type based on the file extension.

user_652950

Did you try the Content-type: text/csv ?

user_2672600

Some time ago I've got a problem with IE6 opening pdf files, and crashing when AdobeReader 6.0 was installed and tried to open file in browser window. Than I found somewhere this header:

header('Content-Type: application/force-download');

And it solved the problem, every pdf file was downloaded and opened in Adobe instead of IE.

user_2586740

This simply doesn't make sense. I tried the accepted answer, all the other answers in here, and it didn't work for me. I tried their permutations, and somehow I managed to make it work in IE like so:

 header("Pragma: public");
 header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
 header("Cache-Control: public");
 header("Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-exce");
 header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=coupons.csv" );
 header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");       
 header("Content-Length: " . strlen($csv)); 
 echo $csv;
 die();

One thing I did is to empty the cache every freaking time I test the code. And it still doesn't make sense. Just in case someone might need this desperately ;)

user_955520
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