Excel/Numbers question

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New MBP with both iWork08 and portions of Office 2008 (Excel).

My company send me my work pattern on an Excel spreadsheet which happily open in either Numbers or Excel.

However, (there's always a 'however' isn't there?) I download the .xls file into my Download directory. When I look for the file I notice that it has sprouted an 'xla' suffix in addition to 'xls'.

That is instead of being 'whatever.xls' it's now 'whatever.xls.xla' and then opens in Numbers as a default.

I've been into the Get Info and changed the 'xla' (by deletion) and then selected Excel to universally open the remaining 'xls' file.

But (being new) I haven't managed to find a way to prevent the 'xla' being added in the first place.

I realise I need help and the 'Missing Manual' is waiting for me at home in UK, unfortunately I am in Lagos and don't get home for another 12 days or so.

What am I doing wrong?
 
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I sure hope someone else can answer this question.. I find this really interesting since this doesn't happen for me.. if I download/save a .xls file.. it stays as a .xls file.. there are no additional extensions added to it. So hopefully someone can answer this one, since I am very curious myself.
 
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brianwmay
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Well chaps, it gets more and more interesting:

Technologist, thanks for the 'steer' and therein I have found a solution without delving into code or what in Windows would be 'registry hacks'.

Some person (mintchocicecream) far more technical than I'll ever be pointed out:

"What I suspect is:
Firefox ignores UTIs.
Safari respects UTIs and thus appends .dot (and so on) to the downloads."

Now whether that particular REASON is correct or not is beyond me.

What it prompted me to do was attempt the same download in Firefox 3 (Beta 5).

It was entirely successful, leaving the suffix as 'xls' rather than tagging the 'xla' (which presumably identifies which application Leopard would natively use to open said file).

I am presuming that 'xla' is a Mac suffix as I've never seen it before and am reasonably conversant with Excel.

Looks however like I am going to have to bin Safari as my main browser as it does its job too efficiently by the look of it.

What it DOES do (this knowledge) is preclude me from having to do what 'technologist' suggests (which is what I HAVE been doing) as my programme (work) changes constantly (I fly for a freight airline). Thus I can be downloading changes in Excel format, once a day at least. It gets really tedious then on this brand new (state of the art etc) MBP. That isn't the reason I went to the expense of a Mac.

So thanks again for the help, it is most satisfying to get at a solution, and I really appreciate your help (as always on this site).
 

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