Excel Object (application/vnd.ms-excel) opens in writer

[Smoothhound]

Hi Folks,

I have a intranet application which allows various html reports to be output as excel files. This works by simply sending the content type: application/vnd.ms-excel to the browser and then sending the slightly massaged html table. This works fine with MS Excel, an excel window will open and display the report exactly as you would expect including colours from CSS merged cells etc. and even formulae!

However using openoffice (RC3/KDE) I get prompted to 'save as' or 'open with Open Office Calc' which is fine. If I choose to open, it will open in writer. If I choose to save and save with an xls extension it will still open in writer (even if I have an open spreadsheet and use file->open).

I have tried changing the content type to application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet but I still get the same results.

So is there anything I can do to get this to work in openoffice? either as the web-developer or as the user?

TIA