Export HTML Table to Excel- Doesn't Open in Office 2010

Question

I am using the following Javascript code to generate an excel on the fly, which converts HTML table to a spreadsheet.

The excel file does not open in Office 2010, sh

Answer 1

We had the same issue too many complaints from our customers. We traced it to the Excel OFffice Security patch KB3115262 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3115262 Which came out July 12, 2016

To work around the issue, we had customers make a change in their Excel to allow files from the internet.

To fix: 1) Open Excel Go to File Options

2) Click Trust Center -> Trust Center Settings

3) Go to Protected View. there are 3 options that show that were all clicked

We uncheck the first option that reads -- "Enable Protected View for files originating from the Internet"

That fixed the issue. Perhaps not the best solution. I'm not sure why this particular KB broke this but I think perhaps the fact the file format is not expected and this setting are conflicting with each other.

On a computer I have that doesn't have this KB installed, all those are checked and it still works fine (not blank but prompts file format is different) and I think shows in protected view.

What led us to fact its not the content of the file is we noticed if we resave the file in notepad or notepad++ without making any changes, the file behaves fine so excel must be reading some property of the file rather than the content to block it.