When I access the data online, I get a message to open an excel file which is exactly what I want. I need others to be able to do this, but all they are getting is a raw data txt file. How do I enable others to access the excel file rather than the txt file? I can see it online in the ftp, have updated permissions for all. Any ideas? Thanks for any help.

Hi Kathy,
They need Excel.

Oh, they have excel, I am testing it on my husbands computer, and he uses excel, but it still appears only as a raw txt file. My computer is the only one reading it as excel.

Everyone needing to access this as an excel file is experienced with ms software. Scott said the file was created with the first submission, so that means it is online, I can see it in the ftp online as an ms file. When I opened it with the file path, it asked to open an excel file. No one else is getting this when they put in the filepath, only the raw data txt file. There must be a way for them to access this if I can. I have 3 computers I can test in my home, others are also trying it. I have made all persmissions executable, still no luck. I have just moved to the new WFB, can see the advantages, just need to work this out for the client. Could be at my end, but I cannot see how to solve it.

How about Zipping it up.

I have no problem sending the file, I want the client to be able to access it online in the excel format as I do. They can cross check their registrations, use them in a mail merge and print name tags for their conference.

Make sure their computers have excel set as the default program for that file type (most likely it already is, but just saying in case it might be part of the problem)

Don't know if this is relevant, but there is a difference in the file extension between Office 2007 and later, and the ones before. If you save the file as whatever.xlsx, older Excel versions will not be able to open them. Better to use the extension xls.

Not sure, but I think Open Office's Calc can open excel files. Oh, and you can also save an Excel file as .pdf, but not sure if your clients can easily extract the same information.

Thanks all, my clients are excel users. When I put in the path for the csv data file that is created by WFB, i get a pop up asking if I want to open the file. It is excel, looks great, and is the ongoing update of the form submissions. My clients and everyone else that tries this, gets a raw data file, not a good tool for what they need. My husband's computer is running Windows 7, made sure of the association, same problem.

You can save the raw csv to excel, can be read, but has a lot of extra html across the page. The one I open from the path, looks great.

I can send daily files to the clients, but not what I wanted to be doing. I have tried all kinds of things, changing file names, etc, nada. I am still hoping one of you will help me out. Somebody out there has bound to know what if anything I can do.

Thanks again everyone for your time. Will let you know if I get a solution.

Can we have a link so we can test?