WebClient 403 Forbidden

Question

I can download this by hand in IE.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar.ris?q=info:j8ymU9rzMsEJ:scholar.google.com/&output=citation&hl=zh-CN&as_sdt=2000&

Answer 1

This is what happened with me:

I was trying to download a (public) .xls file (via DownloadFile method) which was getting downloaded comfortably from all browsers.

After trying and struggling with all answers (but no luck), I finally opened the Stack and noticed something odd (refer screenshot).

Although, the file was getting downloaded via http in browser but it was giving 403 error via DownloadFile method.

Finally, I just changed the URL from http://something to https://something and it worked fine.

Hope this helps!