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In Applications preferences I assign Content Type qfx to iBank but every qfx download asks me what app I want to open the qfx file with! Why?

  • 5 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by graurt

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Hard to add more detail... I open Firefox Applications preferences, assign "iBank" to Content Type "qfx file", yet every time I download a .qfx file Firefox opens a "Opening stmt.qfx" window asking what should Firefox do with it. Every time I select iBank and check the "Do this automatically from now on." box I also re-open Firefox preferences, and sure enough it says it will open qfx files with iBank, but it doesn't ever do it...AUGGH!

Hard to add more detail... I open Firefox Applications preferences, assign "iBank" to Content Type "qfx file", yet every time I download a .qfx file Firefox opens a "Opening stmt.qfx" window asking what should Firefox do with it. Every time I select iBank and check the "Do this automatically from now on." box I also re-open Firefox preferences, and sure enough it says it will open qfx files with iBank, but it doesn't ever do it...AUGGH!

All Replies (5)

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The usual reason for this is that the server is sending a generic binary content type header with the file rather than a specific one. Firefox relies on that header to match up a download with its handler; it doesn't use the file extension.

You can see the headers if you use an add-on like Firebug or an external proxy like Fiddler2. (But I don't know whether that additional level of research is justified... if you confirm that it's a generic content type, you would need to get your financial institution to fix its server software.)

There might be an add-on to solve this problem, but based on a quick search, I don't have a specific recommendation.

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Thanks for the answer. I'm guessing you're correct about the generic header, but it occurs with every financial institution I use, and Safari has no problems with any of them. I guess Safari might be using the extension to id the file-opening app, but all of my financial institutions are using generics? Shoot, maybe I need to change banks ;-)

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If it affects multiple different FIs, then I wouldn't rule out a problem with Firefox. The problem is that the mimeTypes.rdf file has a messy structure, so I don't recommend editing it manually. Hopefully someone will have an alternative solution.

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Just chatted with Firefox... cannot do it as it's content sent along by the financial institution that Firefox must ask if you want to save the file... Oh well.

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Firefox is been doing this to me for years for every application, i.e.: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. It is very annoying, mostly this is why I switched to Chrome.