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I have links to various Excel documents on an intranet site. I want these documents to open in Excel and not within the browser but i cannot figure out how to accomplish this.

In IIS 5 i could do this by setting the href to point to a shortcut file (.lnk). With IIS 6, the shortcut files generate 404 errors. (This is with Excel 2003, FYI).

I should also note that the browser in question is IE8.

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It's a client-side setting and not controllable by the web server. On the client side you go into Folder Options from Windows Explorer (not IE), go to the File Types tab, scroll down to the .XLS extension and uncheck Browse In Same Window. This is true for any MS Office format.

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I didn't want to modify user settings if i didn't have to, but this solution does work. I found another way around it though. – Josh Jan 4 '10 at 17:48
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I figured out a solution that works similarly to IIS5. Instead of using an http:// href link, i used a file:// link to a shortcut (.lnk) file on a network share. This prompts the user to open the file and opens it in Excel if selected.

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Do note, however, that security does not happen in IIS here but rather on the network share. There are also domain issues to consider in larger environments. – squillman Jan 4 '10 at 18:21
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