Excel – How to suppress the file corrupt warning at Excel download

coldfusionexcel

I have a web page which links to an Excel 2007 worksheet. It is a .xls file and not .xlsx file. When I click on the link I get the usual dialog box to either open/save the Excel file. On clicking 'Open', I get the following warning message-

The file you are trying to open,
'filename.xls' is in a different
format than specified by the file
extension. Verify that the file is not
corrupted and is from a trusted source
before opening the file. Do you want
to open the file now?

Can I some how suppress this warning message programmatically (i.e. to hide it or prevent it from showing up?) I'm using ColdFusion for web development.

Best Answer

If you don’t want to look for a solution, but just want to solve the problem, insert this key in your registry to suppress the notification:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Security] “ExtensionHardening”=dword:00000000

You can accomplish the above by doing the following:

  1. Open your Registry (Start -> Run -> regedit.exe)
  2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\OFFICE\12.0\EXCEL\SECURITY
  3. Right click in the right window and choose New -> DWORD
  4. Type “ExtensionHardening” as the name (without the quotes)
  5. Verify that the data has the value “0″