title: MySQL to Excel generation using PHP
body: <pre><code>&lt;?php
      // DB Connection here
      mysql_connect("localhost","root","");
      mysql_select_db("hitnrunf_db");
  
      $select = "SELECT * FROM jos_users ";
      $export = mysql_query ( $select ) or die ( "Sql error : " . mysql_error( ) );
      $fields = mysql_num_fields ( $export );
  
      for ( $i = 0; $i &lt; $fields; $i++ )
      {
          $header .= mysql_field_name( $export , $i ) . "\t";
      }
  
      while( $row = mysql_fetch_row( $export ) )
      {
          $line = '';
          foreach( $row as $value )
          {
              if ( ( !isset( $value ) ) || ( $value == "" ) )
              {
                  $value = "\t";
              }
              else
              {
                  $value = str_replace( '"' , '""' , $value );
                  $value = '"' . $value . '"' . "\t";
              }
              $line .= $value;
          }
          $data .= trim( $line ) . "\n";
      }
      $data = str_replace( "\r" , "" , $data );
  
      if ( $data == "" )
      {
          $data = "\n(0) Records Found!\n";
      }
  
      header("Content-type: application/octet-stream");
      header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=your_desired_name.xls");
      header("Pragma: no-cache");
      header("Expires: 0");
      print "$header\n$data";
  ?&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The code above is used for generating an Excel spreadsheet from a MySQL database,
  but we are getting following error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The file you are trying to open, 'users.xls', is in a
    different format than specified by the file extension.
    Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted
    source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file
    now?</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>What is the problem and how do we fix it?</p>