Why would Office 2007 documents only open as a ZIP file?

September 26, 2007 8:03 PM

Why would an Office 2007 document ONLY open with a .zip extractor?

I work in a library. We have Office 2007 on our computers. Several times now, I have had students create a document in Word or Excel and save it with a 2007 extension (.docx or .xlsx). After closing the document, the student will email it to himself or herself using his or her school-provided email account. When the student attempts to open the attached document, it will only open with WinZip, even though the file extension is not .zip, but rather .docx or .xlsx. I have tried saving the documents and then right-clicking on them to use Open as... in order to force them to open with the appropriate program, but once I save them, the extension then changes to .zip.

When I decide to play along and extract the files, they only contain the XML schema; none are a normal document.

Now, I understand that the new XML format is essentially a zip file of all the parts of the document, and I know that I can open a document as a zip file, but that's not what I want. I want to open it as a normal document. These students have no use for the XML bits.

Even more strange, I have found that I can forward the emails with the attached files to a different webmail, such as gmail, aol, or hotmail, and the same files open in Word or Excel without incident. I find this whole thing terribly baffling.

Could anyone explain to me why this is happening?

Also, I am not positive what email server the student email accounts are using, but I am relatively confident that it is Mirapoint.

posted by foxinthesnow to Technology (9 answers total)

Why? Microsoft changed their Office formats, so as to more easily lock you in to using their new, expensive suite.

Running the document through an email system will tag it as a Zip archive, and it will be handled accordingly. This is down to email systems using MIME to encode non-text files, like Word documents. The .docx files are tagged as Zipped files through this mechanism, unless the system administrator adjusts the email service to handle those files differently.

Fortunately, you can File -> Save As a Word 2003 or RTF document and bypass all this nonsense.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:23 PM on September 26, 2007

When the e-mail is sent to themselves, is the file extension still .***x, or has it changed to .zip in the final e-mail? Also, a little trick is that you might be able to save sent drafts so a student could just open the file that way.

I assume that the students are sending in a webmail program versus an actual program? It sounds like the MIME aspect of the e-mail's getting wacky in the process (though it's usually an Outlook issue on our school's end).

Do you students plan on using these docs at home? If so, I might suggest saving in the 2000/20003 format or .rtf for Word so they can use their own text editors without compatibility issues. Unless every one of your students have Office 2007, there will be issues and it's a pain in the ass.
posted by jmd82 at 8:30 PM on September 26, 2007

(or what Blazecock Pileon said)
posted by jmd82 at 8:31 PM on September 26, 2007

Best answer: Well docx files are really zip files under the cover. The webmail system may be being super tricky as to sniff the magic bytes of the file (the first few bytes of many binary formats are often used a signature to denote the type of file). Since the docx/xlsx formats are relatively new, the school's webmail system may not have the configuration necessary to treat those file extensions as Office documents and override the apparent default magic byte sniffing.

I'd recommend looking into seeing if there is a patch available for the webmail program or if there is a way to add new file extensions to its configuration. If that doesn't work, the students can always save the files locally and the local OS behavior should launch those files in the right application.
posted by mmascolino at 8:37 PM on September 26, 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100069351033.aspx
posted by spock at 5:51 AM on September 27, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks. These students must use 2007 for their assignments, so they cannot save in a previous version. The school gave them Office 2007 for free so they would have no excuse. If they were allowed to turn in assignments with the other file extensions, we wouldn't have this problem. Oh well. I guess the only solution is to contact the webmail administrator and ask them to update their program.
posted by foxinthesnow at 6:11 AM on September 27, 2007

Word 2007 will save and open documents in Word 2003 or RTF formats. Just so you know, that you're not forced to save and use the Word 2007 format.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:43 AM on September 27, 2007

Response by poster: Again, thank you.

Blazecock Pileon, these students must save as 2007 as part of their assignments. If they were allowed to save as a previous version, well, of course we would just do that. I'm certainly not trying to make this difficult. But, the school's curriculum insists that they save using 2007 extensions. It's a little weird, but the school just wants to ensure that the students are on the cutting edge. And since they provided the students with Office 2007, the students have no excuse to save in a previous version.
posted by foxinthesnow at 8:11 AM on September 28, 2007

It's a little weird, but the school just wants to ensure that the students are on the cutting edge.

Prepare for the bleeding.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:14 PM on September 28, 2007