@DesignM8. Thanks for posting. I understand your frustration.
I believe that the issue may be with your web server. It seems as though your server does not know how to interpret the mime types for Office 2007+ files such as docx, xlsx, etc. There are different solutions of how to fix this on the web. The best thing is to do a google search on “docx mime as zip”. To get you started on a solution, I found the following link. That link shows how to add the functionality via a .htaccess file. I am not a .htaccess expert, and I cna’t advise you further, but I know that the issue definitely is your web server not knowing how to interpret the mime of the Office files properly.
Let me know if this helps. I am more than happy to assist you further.