why are attachments to posts not opening directly any more?

  • Unknown's avatar
    goolawahcoop · Member ·

    previously post attachments were opening directly and now all of them, including older posts, are downloading instead. the only thing that changed in my usage was a new theme, which went fine to start. can you help please?
    Peter

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    alexjgustafson · Member ·

    Hi Peter,

    Are you referring to attachments such the PDF and Word Document here?

    http://goolawah.org/goolawah-coop-info/

    When uploading documents, WordPress posts are really just creating download link for those attachments. Whenever you see a PDF or the like open within the browser instead of downloading the files, that is being caused either by the Browser itself (Chrome and Safari both have built-in PDF readers), or by an extension/add-on of the browser.

    Do you have a particular attachment which you’re not happy with its default behavior? I can try recommend a workaround.

    -Alex G.

  • Unknown's avatar
    goolawahcoop · Member ·

    Hi Alex,
    Thanks for your reply.
    The docs are all PDFs and exactly the same monthly format has been opening within the browser for ages, which is what we want. Then the latest docs refused to open and started instead to download. Actually this is occurring in the linked members website to the one you’ve seen already – goolawahmembers.wordpress.com. The offending doc is Dec Meeting Minutes attachment posted on Dec 17, and same for Nov and Oct. The member password to get there from the public site is ‘Longboard’ if you want to check it out. As previous months worked fine I would like to resolve it rather workaround for what is after all a standard
    procedure. BTW I’ve already re-set Safari in my Mac. Much appreciate your help. Peter

  • Unknown's avatar
    alexjgustafson · Member ·

    The Dec 17 minutes are attached at the post here:

    https://goolawahmembers.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/minutes-of-december-2014-community-meeting/201412-community-meeting-minutes/

    The file attached is a ‘.doc’ file, the file format for Microsoft Word, not a PDF. This is why it is initiating a download. I don’t know of any web browsers that have .doc reader built-in without an add-on or an extension.

    For the November post here, all these files will also be downloaded because they are .doc and .xls files — browsers do not read these files by default. They are read using Microsoft Word and Excel.

    When you click a link to a file address that the browser cannot read, the browser downloads the file for use with your computer’s local applications insteads.

    It sounds like you’re just used to have the files uploaded in .pdf, and Safari and Chrome will read and display PDF files rather than downloading them. I’d recommend re-uploading those Oct/Nov/Dec meeting minutes in PDF instead of .doc.

    -Alex G.

  • The topic ‘why are attachments to posts not opening directly any more?’ is closed to new replies.