Can a link to a file trigger a file download rather than displaying the file?

[Kel Hill]

My file attachment is a sample CSV file, which looks confusing when being displayed by confluence because the columns are not visible. The display will confuse users, who might not then realize they need to download it and open it in Excel in order to see it correctly. Is there a way to make the link automatically download?

[Mike Rathwell]

Hi,

This is a bit of a poser; I haven't actually tried to fix this so it does just automagically download it but one can make the text around it to try to guide the users. I say "try" as I have help text scattered all through my instance and I would estimate that it only gets read 60% of the time. A suggestion might be:

Text describing the preamble of what the file is for. The steps to see and use this file are:

1. Right click this link and download the file
2. Open MS Excel
3. Open the downloaded CSV file.

For step 1, there is where I would use the ! to put in a link to the file. Click the inserted link and set it to "Display as link", change the display text to all of step 1 and put it IN as step 1. 

Not optimal but at least it provides some instruction while being the thing to do in and of itself.