Hi Ben and Ty,

 

There’s an issue with Internet Explorer 11, which has been pushed out by Microsoft through Windows Update so has most likely been installed on many home users’ PCs.  The issue is with MS Office documents published on an IIS site requesting credentials; although it’s a Microsoft issue and not a Blackboard issue, Bb have created an article about it:

 

https://blackboard.secure.force.com/btbb_articleview?id=kA370000000GywgCAC

 

I believe the thinking is that if a user provides credentials when they open the file they may be able to save it directly to the site; clearly this won’t be the case on Blackboard…nice idea Microsoft!  The general feeling seems to be to advise users not to use IE11, although clearly this isn’t ideal.

 

I’ve not encountered this with any of our users as yet but I’m sure it will be reported as more users upgrade to IE11 at home.  I’m wondering if we need to officially issue a ‘don’t use IE11’ notice, but I’m watching the situation in case Blackboard issue any fix to work around Microsoft’s problem…

 

Chris

 

 

Hi Tyrone,

 

We run into issues with this quite regularly.  I have seen quite a variety of cases and in the modern world of so many browser/OS/application combinations I suspect this will probably continue and perhaps get worse before it gets better.

 

Yesterday I had a students with a MS Surface RT not able to open documents from Blackboard, we discovered that she had to save them first, then open them and it would work fine.  I think this is one thing can often cause an issue with opening documents in IE- you can open them in Office without saving them but then office is doing some authentication when opening the document and sometimes this handoff doesn’t seem to work (on our domain, when your windows credentials are the same as your Bb credentials, this works, but otherwise it promts for a username and password but doesn’t seem to like them when entered). Anyway, by saving the document first, then opening it, this problem is solved.

 

Hope that helps, or at least makes you feel better that it’s not just your system!

 

Take care,

 

Ben

 

 

Dear all,

 

Throughout the year we have had students who have had issues opening Microsoft Office documents, which were uploaded within Blackboard (e.g. .doc and .docx).

 

Going by what evidence has been sent to me, it does look like an IE browser issue for our IT Support team to resolve, and it is only effecting a dozen or so students.

 

But I just wanted to check if anyone else has had such issues, as in the past there was an issue at Blackboard, and how the file type was recognised. A fix was applied to sort this

 

Any feedback most appreciated

 

Regards

 

Ty

 

Tyrone Knight

VLE Administrator

Northbrook College Sussex

Learning Resources

Broadwater Road

Worthing, West Sussex

BN14 8HJ

Tel: 01903 273159

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