[empirewb]

I need help. I have recently been experiencing a problem downloading. Whenever I download a file it opens up Word or Excel and there's nothing there when it opens up. Nothing at all. I really need help on this. My girlfriend and I are both running OSX. I have an iBook and she has an iMac and she is not experiencing that problem. Please help. Thank you.

[Nobody]

It sounds to me like you have registered Word or Excel as your file helpers for .bin, .hqx, or other encoded files. I'd like more information like what are you downloading, what are you downloading it with, etc.

[empirewb]

Thanks for replying d00d. How do I unregister that? The things that I download that I have problems on are items that need to be opened up to be installed. Such as Palm software or limewire. I had to download these items from my girlfriends computer then transferred over to me. Again, thank you and hope to hear from you soon.

Warren

[Nobody]

It depends on the browser you are using. Check the browser preferences for Helpers (usually under and "advanced" section). Set Stuffit Expander as the default helper for all of those archive types (i.e. bin, hqx, sit, zip). It will also work for tarballs (i.e. tgz) but Expander seems to not handle long filenames so some UNIX archives can get messed up unless you expand them from the terminal. User that with caution.

Also, you could just set everything for "Save to Disk" (as I have done) and double click the archive when you are read to expand it, rather than letting it auto-expand. At one time, there was an auto-run exploit. I think this has been fixed, but I just came to prefer saving downloads and deciding myself what to do from there.

[empirewb]

it still didn't work. And by the way, I use IE for my browser.

[Nobody]

Aloha,
Hmmmmmm.........I was browsing these forums tonite because I am having the same problem. It has been very odd. I opened up my IE prefs, and threw away all the helper prefs that has to do with Word. That didnt work. While this is not a thorough description. I downloaded a program to open "Shorten" files. Upon completion of the download....low and behold, Word opens up..(WTF is this?) I closed Word, left the download on the desktop, opened Stuffit and it unstuffed it, and allowed me to install it. Later when I went to download the music files that Shorten was to convert, the music files also opened in Word..OR...opened in another IE window as a jibberish text file. Frustrating, and I have not been able to resolve it myself yet. What is a Dead Head have to do to listen to all those archived Dead shows? Any help would be appreciated.

wabi

[Nobody]

I've had this problem in the past and i fixed it rather easily. What you have to do is basically go to the file that is having the opening problem. Option click it and pull up the info tab (or hit apple and i). When this pops up go to the "open with" drop down menu and then click on the little icon and select the proper app. This happened with me and *.dmg files a while back. If this doesnt work then i'm a little stumped on what to do. You could always call apple and then see what they say to do.... they always know everything images/icons/grin.gif

[empirewb]

Cybrix,
Thank you for that, it worked. Now the question is, will I havve to keep doing this whenever I download new stuff. I guess I'll just have to find out. Thank's again.

[Nobody]

empireweb, no you should have to do this every time. Basically what it does is tells os x that you want it to open all files with that specific extenstion with that app. If you look right under the icon well that shows the app pic it should say that it will open all files with that extention with the certain app.