Safari appends .dot to all .doc files after Word 2008

Question

I am having a weird problem with Safari which may be caused by incompatibilities with Office 2008.
Since upgrading to Office 2008 (and also trashing my entire system then installing Office 2008 for scratch), Safari is having this nasty habit of appending .dot to all .doc downloads.
For example, on the following site, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=311f4be8-9983-4ab0-9685 -f1bfec1e7d62&displaylang=en if I download "Deploying Vista Step by Step Guide.doc", Safari will save it as "Deploying Vista Step by Step Guide.doc.dot" which is rather unhelpful.
The knowledge base article (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304155) suggests that the problem is due to web server configuration - but this does not seem to be the case, because it did not happen before I installed Office 2008.
Using the "misfox" preference pane (http://mac.clauss-net.de/misfox/) I think the problem appears to be that the MIME type application/msword is associated with the file extension .dot rather than .doc
Is anyone else encountering the same issue?
(I am running Mac OS X 10.5.1 on a first gen MacBook Pro upgraded to 2GB of RAM)
Thanks to anyone who can help or confirm/deny this weird problem!

Answer 1

After reading up on Uniform Type Identifiers, I think I have a solution - or at least some sort of workaround. This requires editing the Microsoft Word package.
1. Open the Microsoft Word package (Action -> Show Package Contents)
2. Go to Contents and open Info.plist in a plist editor (I used Panic Coda)
3. Remove lines 703-704 where it reads <key>public.mime-type</key><string>application/msword</string>
4. Remove any caches/whatever (I used Onyx) and reboot.
Further details on Step #3:
There are two instances where Microsoft Word defines application/msword. On my copy of Word, it defines it at line 684-685 and line 703. Line 685 refers to the document type .doc while line 703-704 refers to .dot.
Obviously, I want the MIME type application/msword to refer to .doc (and don't really care too much about .dot files).
Before (lines 688-706):
<dict>
<key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>
<string>public.data</string>
<key>UTTypeDescription</key>
<string>Microsoft Word 97 - 2004 template</string>
<key>UTTypeIconFile</key>
<string>W8TN.icns</string>
<key>UTTypeIdentifier</key>
<string>com.microsoft.word.dot</string>
<key>UTTypeTagSpecification</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.ostype</key>
<string>W8TN</string>
<key>public.filename-extension</key>
<string>dot</string>
<key>public.mime-type</key>
<string>application/msword</string>
</dict>
</dict>
After:
<dict>
<key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>
<string>public.data</string>
<key>UTTypeDescription</key>
<string>Microsoft Word 97 - 2004 template</string>
<key>UTTypeIconFile</key>
<string>W8TN.icns</string>
<key>UTTypeIdentifier</key>
<string>com.microsoft.word.dot</string>
<key>UTTypeTagSpecification</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.ostype</key>
<string>W8TN</string>
<key>public.filename-extension</key>
<string>dot</string>
</dict>
</dict>
Don't know if this will work anywhere else, but it solved my problem and Safari no longer mysteriously adds .dot to my .doc downloads.