Can't read Mac IE 5.2.3 files with Windows IE 6

[kilamanjaro]

Dear Forum:

HELP!! Please! I'm a new Mac Powerbook G4 user who downloaded a humongous number of html pages (from different sites) using the Mac and Internet Explorer 5.2.3 on the Mac. I put the PowerBook on my LAN so I can access its files from an IBM ThinkPad running Windows 2000 and IE 6.0.2800 SP1. I can see all the files from both "ends". However I cannot open a single one of the IE5.2.3 files using my IE6.0 browser. (I get a message asking what application I want to use, and I can see that Windows Explorer (file manager) sees the IE5 files as type "File" and not as "html". When I copy the files from the Mac to the PC I get the same result. I installed Mozilla on the PC and it gave the same response (don't recognize file, what app do you want to open this with?). In both cases when I "said" hey, just go ahead an open them like normal, the response was a repeat of "don't recognize etc." When I renamed a Mac html file to have an html extension on the PC it sometimes opened it (not always) and then with a mangled header/intro with lots of "%&*£@$%" these types of characters and with no images. ANY ideas would be appreciated (except for the idea of figuring out how to find and download all those files again!) . Many thanks for any comments, insights, suggestions.

kilamanjaro

[LiquidReflex]

One factor could be how you "downloaded" the files. Did you do a "save as", if so, what did you choose (web archive, HTML source, plain text)? How you saved it could be part of the problem. Also, when it comes to sharing between Mac and PC, you ALWAYS need to have a file extension on it! Transferring a file called "webpage" doesn't bring with it exactly what file type it is, but "webpage.html" will. This needs to be done before you transfer, as that is when the computer (PC) will try to interpret what type of file it is and label it accordingly. Adding a .html after you transferred it will not help (as you found out). I would try to rename the files on the Mac to have appropriate extensions, then copy them over and see if you can open them.

[kilamanjaro]

One factor could be how you "downloaded" the files. Did you do a "save as", if so, what did you choose (web archive, HTML source, plain text)? How you saved it could be part of the problem. Also, when it comes to sharing between Mac and PC, you ALWAYS need to have a file extension on it! Transferring a file called "webpage" doesn't bring with it exactly what file type it is, but "webpage.html" will. This needs to be done before you transfer, as that is when the computer (PC) will try to interpret what type of file it is and label it accordingly. Adding a .html after you transferred it will not help (as you found out). I would try to rename the files on the Mac to have appropriate extensions, then copy them over and see if you can open them.

Hi Kevin: many thanks for your response and the suggestions! I saved as "Web Archive" with the options Download Images. The other options are "HTML Source" and "Text". I will, as you suggested, re-name the downloaded Mac files ON THE MAC with html extensions. For some reason PDF, JPEG and GIF files are written with their extensions but web pages/html files are not.

Do you know of a way on the Mac to rename (add a .html extension) a bunch of (batch) of files?

Thanks for the time and effort,

Kyle