Something occurred recently that didn't happen before, but it seems that now OutlookConnect doesn't recognize Excel files that weren't originally created in Excel. For instance, I am creating an excel file using ColdFusion.
In creating the file, I use the following tags:
<cfheader name="Content-Disposition" value="filename=contacts.xls">
<cfcontent type="application/ms-excel">
Underneath this I create HTML tables and cells that, when opened up in Excel, arrange all of the headers and data within Excel "cells". This looks no different than if I had originally created the spreadsheet in Excel itself. Unfortunately, OutlookConnect doesn't recognize the Excel file. It would seem that OutlookConnect only recognizes hex/binary Excel files rather than HTML files that carry Excel mime headers.
Here is a screenshot of the error I receive when attempting to import a "generated" Excel file:
Is there any way around this issue?
What's more interesting to me is that this was actually working at one point and now it no longer works. It *may* be because before I had already assigned an ODBC datasource to a contact folder in Outlook AND established the field mappings. Once that was done, anytime I generated a fake Excel file through Coldfusion and saved it (to the previously saved excel file), OutlookConnect didn't seemed to mind. However once I removed the assigned table and attempted to run through the configuration setup again, I got the above error. Again, this is what *may* have occurred. Regardless, now that the assigned tables have been removed, the only way for OutlookConnect to recognize a Coldfusion generated Excel file is if I open the generated Excel file up inside Excel, then SAVE it again as an "excel" type, then everything works.
Basically I'm wondering if there's any way for OutlookConnect to ignore the face that an Excel file was generated by HTML output rather than created originally inside the Excel application?
Any help is appreciated. Thanks.