Download file from web page...?

Question

hi,
how would i enable users to doenload an excel file from my web page. i know it is something along the lines of:
<a href="records.xls"></a>
the records.xls is in the same directory as my html pages and still doesn't seem to wok. someone mentioned it may have something to do with the file being on my hard drive and needs to be placed on the network....make any sense?
please help me out if you have any ideas..i'm totally lost.
regards,
jeena

Answer 1

Below is the doGet method, which is called from another servlet, with all the html stuff. i've taken out some parts of the code since its of no relevance.
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res)
                                   throws ServletException, IOException {
try{
     log (" ENTERED DOGET IN LECTURE!!!!");
          res.setContentType("text/html");
          PrintWriter out = res.getWriter();
Enumeration values = req.getParameterNames();
          //while(values.hasMoreElements()) {
               String name = (String)values.nextElement();
               String value = (req.getParameterValues(name)[0]);
if(name.compareTo("submit") != 0) {
if (value.equals("Enter/Edit")) {
out.println("<A HREF=records.xls>Download Attendance Records</A>");//TO DOWNLOAD FILE
     catch(SQLException e) {
          log (e.toString());
}