IE7 ile download replaces spaces with underscore (_)

Question

First post here so hello to all first of all

I have a question which i cant seem to find an answer for no matter how hard i search.

Basically, i just want to turn off the functionality that replaces the spaces with underscores when downloading a file from IE7.

I would think it is possible but i just cant find the answer.

Hope someone can help,

Thanks in advance,

Dave

Answer 1

Hi Dave,

I have exactly the same problem with each space characters in the filename replaced by an underscore character - note this is just within the filename itself (the contents of the file are okay) during a 'file save as' download.

I notice that the # character is also replaced by an underscore.

Only upgraded to IE7 today and this is the first problem identified but I have not been able to see which option to modify.

Is this a font/language setting translation issue?

Hopefully someone will explain it to both of us!

Thanks,

Jeff.

Answer 2

Hi Jeff,

Glad its not just me!  Did you manage to find a fix in the end?

Does anybody else know how to turn this option off?

Thanks

Dave

Answer 3

Hi Dave,

We too have spaces being replaced by underscores.  Users of our application do a checkout (download) followed by a checkin (upload), and new files are being created in the repository rather than old ones being updated.  So we too need a fix or workaround.

John

Answer 4

I've come across this myself. If you are able to change the spaces to %20s then IE7 will convert them correctly. Firefox though will take them literally ( at least when using the Content-disposition header) so you will need to do this for requests from IE7 only.

We did the following in our app. ( a tomcat based document repository)

    String userAgent = request.getHeader("User-Agent");
    if (userAgent.contains("MSIE 7.0")) {
        filename = filename.replace(" ", "%20");   
    }        
    response.addHeader("Content-disposition", "attachment;filename=\"" + filename+"\"");

Answer 5

Hi Dave,

Thanks so much for the help.

Late yesterday, I experimented with some other special characters and verified that # also gets replaced by a space ... and ; truncates everything in the file name to the right! So, I expanded on your solution as follows. (Delphi code)

// test for ie7.0 here, if yes
saveAsFileName := URLEncodePath(saveAsFileName);
PutHttpHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename="' + saveAsFileName + '"');

// and the referenced function is as follows:

function UrlEncodePath(const S: string): string;
var
I: longInt;
Hex: string;
begin
result := '';
for I := 1 to Length(S) do
begin
case S of
'a'..'z', 'A'..'Z', '0'..'9', '.', '/', ':':
result := result + S;
'\':
result := result + '/';
else
begin
Hex := IntToHex(ord(S), 2);
if Length(Hex) < 2 then
Hex := '0' + Hex;
result := result + '%' + Hex;
end;
end;
end;
end;

(I don't know why the light bulb, but replace it with "left brace, i right brace" (omit quotes)).

This function copies standard URL characters as is, replaces \ with /, and coverts any other character to its %hh representation.

The above worked for downloads with a space, # and ; in the file name. Can't promise it works in every situation, but I hope it might be useful to others encountering the same problem.

John

Answer 6

Dear All

 

I think the question is not answer yet..

"Does anybody else know how to turn this option off?"

Help me too.. with this problem

 

Regards..

Answer 7

Hi All,

I finally managed to track down some kind of answer to if this can be switched off... and it seems it cannot.

However, there does seem to be quite a simple fix for it (along the same line of what john conway suggested above but just converts the spaces).  You can read the thread here:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general/browse_thread/thread/d29c6cf6f78a0f0f/16250eac2a0b3372%2316250eac2a0b3372

Thanks for all your replies.

Cheers

Dave

Answer 8

We are having this issue with IE 7 and our web application. The fixes listed above seem to work when selecting "Save" from the download dialog but when selecting "Open" for e.g. a Word document, the fix breaks the filename by including the %20 in the filename.

Basically, according to our research, current options for MSIE 7 and handling filenames are:

1) not encoding the headers: "Open" works, "Save as" replaces special characters by underscores

2) encoding the headers: "Open" includes the encodings (e.g. %20 etc.) in the filenames and "Save as" works.

Is there any workaround for these issues apart from waiting for a new version of IE 7 that hopefully fixes this issue (or starting to write a download agent in Java that ensures that the built-in mechanisms within IE 7 are not used for file downloads)?

Thanks for any help

Answer 9

Hi Mikael,

Please let me know if you found the solution for this issue with the workaround.

1) not encoding the headers: "Open" works, "Save as" replaces special characters by underscores

2) encoding the headers: "Open" includes the encodings (e.g. %20 etc.) in the filenames and "Save as" works.

Thanks,

~JUDA

Answer 10

Microsoft claims to have a hotfix for this bug, which would solve many a user's problems.  But, for some reason, I can't install it (it tells me that I don't need to install it since my computer already has newer updates).  Yet, I check the DLL Microsoft includes in the hotfix and the DLL on my system (wininet.dll) and the DLL on my system is older than the DLL in the hotfix.  I try to manually overwrite the DLL, but the System File Protection works way too well.