Change the MIME type of Your Visualforce Page

You can specify a different format for a Visualforce page by using the contentType attribute on the <apex:page> tag. This sets the HTTPContent-Type header for the response to the value of the page’s contentType attribute.

The contentType attribute takes a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) type as a value, such as application/vnd.ms-excel, text/csv, or image/gif.

Browsers can behave unpredictably if you set an invalid contentType. For information about valid MIME types, see http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/.

The contentType attribute accepts any MIME type as a valid value. However, Visualforce supports content conversion of only PDFs, which you can do by specifying a renderAs attribute.

Visualforce doesn’t generate other file formats. It only sets the Content-Type field of the HTTP response header to the specified MIME type. Some file formats, such as .xlsx, can fail to render.

Note

For example, to display Visualforce page data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, use the contentType attribute on the <apex:page> tag. Specify a value of application/vnd.ms-excel.

This Visualforce page builds a list of cases by using static HTML and the <apex:repeat> component.

1<!-- This page must be accessed with an Account Id in the URL. For example: 
2https://MyDomainName--c.vf.force.com/apex/myPage?id=001D000000JRBet -->
3
4<apex:page standardController="Account" contentType="application/vnd.ms-excel">
5    <table border="0" >
6        <caption>Cases</caption>
7        <tr>
8            <th>Case Number</th>
9            <th>Origin</th>
10            <th>Creator Email</th>
11            <th>Status</th>
12        </tr>
13        <apex:repeat var="cases" value="{!Account.Cases}">
14            <tr>
15                <td>{!cases.CaseNumber}</td>
16                <td>{!cases.Origin}</td>
17                <td>{!cases.Contact.email}</td>
18                <td>{!cases.Status}</td>
19            </tr>
20        </apex:repeat>
21    </table>
22</apex:page>

If the page doesn’t display properly in Excel, try a different MIME type, such as text/csv.

Tip

Visualforce Developer Guide

Change the MIME type of Your Visualforce Page