In Office 2007 how do you preview a doc before opening it?

[GeorgeR]

I am new to Office 2007/Vista, but have used Office since the early 90's.
How do I preview a doc in Office 2007 before opening it like you could in
office 2003/XP?

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

In the Open dialog, click Organize - Layout - Preview pane.

 

[djprius]

Are you talking about Word 2007, which is what the poster inquired about?

I get to the preview pane in Word 2007 as follows:
Office Button | Open | View (on toolbar) | Preview

David

**************************************

 

[GeorgeR]

Thanks you for the quick responses. Follow up question - Using the Organize,
Layout, choices I enabled the preview pane. However, selecting a doc does
not show the preview in the pane, it remains blank. This is true for both
*.doc and *.docx files.

Interestingly, following the responses you've outlined, and with Office
closed, I can go to Start, Documents, and see the document preview there. (if
Office is open to any of the products, the preview doesn't work at Start,
Documents.)

Any further suggestions? Am I am obviously doing something incorrectly? At
least I have a "work-around." Thanks again for your help and suggestions.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

The method you describe is print preview... which is for an already-open
document. He was referring to previewing *before* opening, in Vista/Word
2007, which is done in the Open dialog box (as well as in Windows Explorer).

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

You're not doing anything wrong. There is a bug in Word 2007/Vista that
sometimes makes previews not show up. It's intermittent, and I would expect
that it will work sometimes, but not others, and I haven't discovered a
common thread. I have discovered, however, that the problem seems less
pronounced since installing SP1 for Office 2007.

 

[djprius]

Herb,

No, I am *not* describing print preview. I am describing the pane
(in Windows XP/Word 2007) in the Open dialog box where the file name
list is shown on the left-hand side and the preview of the selected (but
UNopened) file is shown in the box on the right-hand side.

I gather Vista in conjunction with Word 2007 operates differently
from Windows XP.

David

****************************************

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

For some reason, I mis-parsed what you typed... when I saw the word "View"
(I tend to read backwards, and stopped when I saw View, since I knew that
View isn't used in Word 2007/Vista for what the OP wanted. So, yes--Word
2007 works differently in Vista than it does in Windows XP. The Views
dropdown does not have Preview as one of the options. In Vista, you don't
have to choose between Details and Preview (for example). You can have both
at the same time, since the preview is presented in a separate pane.

 

[djprius]

Thanks for taking the time to explain the difference in the Open
dialog in Windows XP vs. Vista.

David

*********************************

 

[Rob]

You're not doing anything wrong. There is a bug in Word 2007/Vista that
sometimes makes previews not show up. It's intermittent, and I would expect
that it will work sometimes, but not others, and I haven't discovered a
common thread. I have discovered, however, that the problem seems less
pronounced since installing SP1 for Office 2007.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[Rob]

Hi Herb ~

Just wanted to add my 2 cents and say that djprius is not the only one
having this problem. For me it's not intermittent. I get it all the time.
Strangely just about everything else [txt, xls, xlsx, pdf, tif, gif, jpg,
bmp] previews without a problem but the doc and docx do not preview. I did
try the workaround of accessing the doc files via "Documents" from the Start
menu and that does work for me. A little inconvenient but it works.

Any idea when this bug will be fixed?

Thanks for your input.

Rob

P.S. Please excuse the blank posting. I didn't understand how to post the
first trip around.

 

[MarkL]

Did you get a solution to this problem?
I know this post was ages ago but I have the same problem in Word 2007/Vista
- very frustrating.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Preview view works the same in Word 2007 as in previous versions if you're
running under Windows XP. Under Vista, I believe Vista's thumbnails take the
place of Word's preview and are available only in Explorer (not in Word).
This is summed up by a comment at
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/microsoft-office/preview-documents-without-opening-them-in-word-2007/
as follows:

It seems to be a problem with Word rather than Vista as using Windows
Explorer with a preview pane it works fine and the result is the same.
To enable the preview pane in Windows Vista Explorer, simply launch any
Explorer window in folder view. At the folder menu, the select Organize, and
then click on Layout, and finally select Preview Pane.

To set this as the default setting select Folder options and select set this
as the default on the view tab.

 

[MarkL]

Thanks Suzanne for such a quick reply.
Got it working ok in Explore thanks - it will help
Is there likely to be a fix for the problem in Word 2007 anytime soon so
preview works there?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

A lot of the functionality previously in Office (preview, speech, search)
has been handed over to Vista; I don't expect to see it restored to Office.

 

[ORstoriest]

Needing to work with a lot of documents, not being able to preview a doc
before opening it really bogs down my work. I hope there would there would be
solution. When you invest in new software, you expect things to work better.

 

[briesmith]

I couldn't agree more. It's not as though Vista or Office 2007 are new and
I've just authorised a purchase of Office Professional for £199; so it's not
cheap either. Document preview is a key productivity issue and I cannot
understand how Microsoft can simply ignore the fact that it doesn't work.

It really is a rare example of what the Micro$oft haters bang on about and
lets MS down badly.