I am having problems downloading Office documents from my instructor's protected web site. What am I doing wrong?

There are some problems that could prevent your computer from downloading and/or displaying an Office file (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint) correctly:

• If you use Internet Explorer 5.5 or earlier, clicking on a link to download an Office file will make the browser open that file directly in its interface, instead of letting you save the file onto your system.  If that happens, Internet Explorer will launch an Office application within its own Window and will give it the information about which file to open.  The problem: old Microsoft Office installations have a bug that will prevent them from getting the proper authentication information from Internet Explorer, therefore their request to open a protected file will be denied.  Microsoft Word, for example, will request a protected DOC file and receive an OIS login screen back, because it didn't have the proper permissions to get the file (IE does).  Solution: apply the latest update pack to your Office installation (download it from http://www.microsoft.com/office/downloads).  Workaround: right-click on the link to the file and choose "Save Target As" to save the file to your local computer first, then double-click on the file to open it.
   
• If you use Internet Explorer 6, you should get a dialog box asking what you want to do as soon as you click on a link to download a file.  The problem described above may still happen if you choose the "Open" option.  If you don't have the latest Office Service Pack on your computer, make sure you choose the "Save" option to download the file first.  Then double-click on the file to open it.
   
• If you downloaded a file and cannot open it, it may be that you don't have Microsoft Office installed on your computer, or that the version of Office you have is too old and cannot open the file.  Solution: upgrade your software.  Workaround: download a free viewer from the Microsoft web site so you can at least see the contents of the file; or download a converter that can save the file to another version of Office (if you have an older version) or to another application format.  Download viewers and converters from the Microsoft Web site.