Open an Excel File in Excel, not HTML

I did a rather extensive Google search and either I didn't enter the right keywords, or the information isn't out there. I also looked to find newsgroups for browsers, but none were active. So here is my question, and perhaps you can either help me or point me to the right place.

I have an Excel file residing on the server. When the user clicks a button to I send a stream with the following header info:

Content-type: application/octet-stream
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=something.xls
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: 0

followed by the html description of the Excel table.

What results is a prompt to either open or save the file. So far so good.

In my browsers, if I choose "open" they open an Excel spreadsheet. This is the desired behavior. However, some people have it open as an HTML page. (They have Excel installed on their machines). I believe that this is a browser setting. However, search as I have tried, I cannot seem to find the proper settings to make it open in Excel.

Can someone please give me either the answers or pointers to them for at least IE and Firefox?

Thanks.
.

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