Microsoft KB Archive/317208

= Internet Explorer Cannot Download Office Documents from an IIS Server When Content Expiration Is Set to Expire Immediately =

Article ID: 317208

Article Last Modified on 1/31/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.1
 * Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.0
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0

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This article was previously published under Q317208



SYMPTOMS
When you try to download Microsoft Office documents from a server running Internet Information Services (IIS) to a client using Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6, you may receive the following error messages:

Internet Explorer cannot download  from.

Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet Site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later.&quot;

Note:This problem is not reproducible with any other known file types.



CAUSE
This behavior occurs when the Content Expiration option in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Headers, within IIS, is set to Expire Immediately. Internet Explorer must save any Microsoft Office file to the local cache directory, and then use the associated application to open the file. If you set Content Expiration to Expire Immediately, the Office documents are not cached locally and the operation fails.



RESOLUTION
When you configure the HTTP Headers within IIS for the Virtual Directory (or for the Directory) that contains Office documents, do not set Content Expiration to Expire Immediately.



MORE INFORMATION
This is a known cause of slow performance on a Web server running IIS.

This is not a best practice.

Additional query words: iis 5 internet explorer 6 content expiration expire immediate immediately

Keywords: kbdocerr kbpending kbprb KB317208

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