Comments on: Preview Documents Without Opening Them In Word 2007

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:53:21 +0000

Followup: A couple interesting (and maybe helpful things I noticed)
1- On my wife’s computer the preview works in Word 2007! When I look at her version info (Word Options, Resources) she shows 12.0.4518.1014 . I have 12.0.6504.5000 and SP2 MSO 12.0.6525.1000 (and mine will note preview). I tried reinstalling and trying preview, then adding patches, checking preview every step of the way and mine would never preview.

2- Neither would my Explorer preview. And I don’t see how this could have anything to do with it, but I then tried previewing a Word 2007 Doc that had a Word Table in it with Explorer and it previewed correctly. It has been prevewing perfectly in Explorer ever since. This was a great help as I was cleaning out some folders.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:57:55 +0000

My Word 2007 won’t preview docx or doc files either. Neither can I preview them in explorer. But an interesting side note- txt files do preview. That might be a clue for someone to solve the mystery. And yes I am trying to clean out old files and I have to open them in Word, then close them in Word and then decided whether to delete them. Kind of frustrating.

Is MS saying anything about this kind of a major problem?

By: MarkS

MarkS — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:37:51 +0000

I have Vista a Word 2007 and preview doesn’t work. Works great on my laptop with XP. I spent alot of time trying to find a fix and gave up. So, I just bought a Win 7 computer for my secretary, and installed the standard version of Office 2007. Guess what, no preview in Word 2007, and preview pane says Microsoft Document Viewer Error. Clean computer, with almost nothing on it and it doesn’t work. Alot of people have said how great Windows 7 is, well, I’m not that impressed, and the lack of file viewing on a brand new clean machine with a clean office install, is infuriating.

By: petad

petad — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:46:07 +0000

I think I have found a trick with the Preview showing up, then not showing up when you restart within Explorer. If you open the Preview Pane, then view a .docx word doc, it will not show the preview. Then go and view a previous version .doc, which should preview, then come back and preview a .docx, and viola!, you should be able to see the .docx.

Still really annoying that it won’t work in Word, though.

By: tris

tris — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:37:46 +0000

I have Vista and Word 2007 and the same problem occurs with me. A blank space where the doc preview should be! But I found out it ONLY works after restarting your computer and it only works one time. When you select your document and open it then try to preview documents again its back to being blank. Its so frustrating but the Excel program works fine for previewing documents–just make sure you switch the viewing option from “all excel files” to just “all files” and then right click to open the doc in Word–so that will have to do for now.

By: Saint

Saint — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:47:29 +0000

I work with Word 2007 and Vista Business SP1 and I have had this problem with the preview pane from day 1 of purchasing the computer. Like Joe explained above, last week my preview pane started working and I thought great assuming an automatic update had fixed the issue. Alas, I turned my computer off for the weekend and when I started it again on Monday the preview pane was not working again.
The is a long ongoing issue and it is about time Microsoft sorted it.

By: hlacom

hlacom — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:13:30 +0000

I use w2007 and vista home basic, and I stil visit similar problem: no preview before open in word 2007. but it can preview in Expoler(I choose Open > Organize > Layout > Preview Pane ) but it spend ~45s to preview

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:54:14 +0000

The work-around does not work for me. Using Vista and Office 2007, I cannot preview either .doc or .docx files in Word, Excel, or Explorer, but I can preview .xlsx and .pptx files. I can preview the same files (doc and docx) using Word 2002, so the problem is not the files…

By: DaaDDAA

DaaDDAA — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:55:57 +0000

Some problem in windows7 RTM and office 2007 – In Open dialog in Word, I can not preview doc or docx files, but xls, xlcx I can…
In Excel, I can not preview xls, xlsx, bud doc, docx yes… This is offices problem.

By: JO

JO — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:07:45 +0000

Thanks-This is really useful.

By the way, it works in Word 2000 too.