Supporting Technology

Ok, I’ve been having this problem on a user’s workstation only with certain word documents located on an external web server. I couldn’t quite determine what caused some to do it and others not to… but here’s the symptoms and the resolution:

Symptoms
A user clicks on a link like this: http://www.somedomain.com/somewordfile.doc and either saves the file to a local location or IE will say “404 not found” if IE is configured to open the Office documents in the same window.

Resolution
Install Office 2003 Service Pack 3. Download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=85AF7BFD-6F69-4289-8BD1-EB966BCDFB5E&displaylang=en. That fixed the problem for me!

By the way, if you are wondering how to get Office documents to open in Internet Explorer, go to My Computer, Click Tools, Folder Options, File Types tab. Go to the doc file type (or xls if that is applicable in your case). Click on the “Advanced” button. Check the box that says “Browse in same window.” That should do it!

Best wishes!