MVC: after export to excel, index action result is not getting called

Question

I have one MVC application, in which export to excel functionality is given. I want to redirect Index action once export is finished. I have written below code but it not redirected to index action. what i missed here ?

output = new MemoryStream();
workbook.Write(output);
Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";
Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", string.Format("attachment;filename={0}", "DailyCashList.xls"));
Response.Clear();
Response.BinaryWrite(output.GetBuffer());
Response.Flush();
Response.End();

return this.RedirectToAction("Index");

Answer 1

You can't do that I'm afraid, once you have sent the header for the download, you can't then send another set of headers to do the redirect.

There is a technique mentioned in this blog post which you can alter to do a redirect when a cookie appears from the download action.

http://gruffcode.com/2010/10/28/detecting-the-file-download-dialog-in-the-browser/

It's not perfect, but it is one of the limitations of the http protocol I'm afraid