Attachments Best Practices

Hello all....we've run into issues with Attachments.  I've read several posts here and is seems like our issue has some legacy to it.

Basically, they work fine for some and are not downloadable by others.  We have a school who's student's and teacher's computers are seeing the files (MS Suite and PDF files) as ZIP files rather than their native format. 

After reviewing some suggestions, we decided on the following course of action.

1.)  Create actual zip files containing the files and instruct the students to download the zipped fileset rather than individual files.

2.)  Convert MS Suite 2007 (.docx and .xlsx) files to 2003 versions.  (We placed them as individual files as well as included these files in the zip set).

This hopefully combines solutions for issues around browsers interpreting the MS suite .abcX files as zip files and forces the zip functionality to allow proper download. 

Now, I should add, that we deliver the courses in our LMS.  We've posted the files in a discussion forum and this actually solved the issue.  The students had NO DOWNLOAD issues with the very same files that did cause issues in the Attachments area.  I feel this is a workaround though and not really an integrated solution. 

Does anyone have thoughts, experiences and best practices to address the issue and properly deliver a more fail proof file download using Attachments?   We are uploading entire new Units now and will be testing at the client school on Monday.  

Thanks everyone.

Mark Burke

viaEdTechnologies