Unable to preview office documents in the preview pane

[Guest]

I am using Vista Ultimate. I am unable to preview any office document (Word,
Excel, Powerpoint 2003 or 2007) in the preview pane. I have the preview pane
opened from organize->layout->Previewpane. I have also checked on the "show
preview handlers" under the folder properties. Can anybody help?

 

[Sharon F]

I am using Vista Ultimate. I am unable to preview any office document (Word,
Excel, Powerpoint 2003 or 2007) in the preview pane. I have the preview pane
opened from organize->layout->Previewpane. I have also checked on the "show
preview handlers" under the folder properties. Can anybody help?

Office 2003 installed here. I'm not seeing previews of Office documents in
the preview or details pane. IIRC, previews for recent versions of Office
were available in XP until SP2. Again, if I remember correctly, "security"
was the reason for it being removed. Example: someone glancing over your
shoulder would see contents of unopened and possibly confidential files.
They still remain "gone" in XP SP2+.

I don't recall previews ever returning in Vista for 2003 documents (maybe
briefly during the beta but gone by final release). I can't comment on 2007
previews one way or the other as I haven't used that version yet.

 

[Ilia Sacson [MS]]

On my Vista Ultimate + Office 2007, office files show up in the previewer
fine. Do you have MS Office isntalled? Which version? Does it work for other
file types such as text or is it only the office files?
Thanks,
Ilia

 

[Guest]

I had the same problem with Ultimate. Bought a Gateway system with Home
Premium & a trial version of Office 2007. Bought the Ultimate upgrade & the
Student/Teacher of office 2007. I could preview text (.TXT) files but no
office related files. I contacted Microsoft and spent 4+ hours with them
this morning to no avail. They are still looking into it.

Didn't want to wait for them so continued troubleshooting myself. I
COMPLETELY REMOVED OFFICE (I thought) and after reboot manually removed
remnants of office program related files. (Did a search from windows
explorer for "office." It showed document files as well. I DELETED ALL
PROGRAM RELATED FILES, including start menu & desktop shortcuts. I, then
rebooted again.

After restart (just for kicks), I reopened the Programs & Features option of
Control Panel and to my chagrin discovered a version of office still
installed. (It was Office student/teacher.) My guess is that the first
uninstall removed only the original trial version (which I thought was
overwritten by the student/teacher upgrade.) I ran the uninstall again.

After restart, I ran "Disk Cleanup" & "Disk Defragmenter" to ensure a clean
system. I, then, rebooted and reinstalled Office 2007. IT WORKED
IMMEDIATELY. I can NOW PREVEIW ALL FILES within office and windows explorer.

Hope this helps. THE PREVIEW DOES WORK WITH VISTA ULTIMATE!!! Microsoft is
supposed to call me back on their progress tomorrow. I will post what they
say. Maybe they will come out with some kind of patch??????!!!!!

 

[Guest]

Same problem w/Home Premium. Did microsoft get back to you w/a resolution ?

 

[Guest]

No, I did not get a response from Microsoft. For me, completely removing it
as I explained worked. Due to compatibility issues with my printer, I
reverted to the Home Premier version, kept the "Trial" version installed and
licensed it. The problem is back. I haven't taken the time to totally
uninstall it and reinstall with the licensed CDROM, but will be doing this
soon. I'm thinking maybe it is a problem with the trial version install. I
will post when I do this. As a workaround, I have been opening the Windows
Explorer and using the preview mode there. It works and I'm able to copy and
paste from the preview. Obviously, a little cumbersome...

 

[Guest]

I uninstalled the pre-installed Office, restarted my computer; then installed
from CDROM. After the installation, I restarted; then verified I could still
review in Windows Explorer. Then I opened Word and tried it there. It
worked!

I, then, installed all the latest patches, restarted and IT WAS BROKEN. I
may try it again, installing one patch at a time to try to determine which
one caused the problem, but not sure I want to bother. Their liable to break
it again anyway. I suspect it is one of the "SECURITY" patches.

 

[Arend]

Hello,

I am running MS Office 2003 on Windows Vista Ultimate (both en-us language).
I am able to see txt, pdf files in the preview pane but no office documents
(word XL etc). This is a huge problem for me and I need urgently a solution
without uninstalling and reinstalling the office.
Can you help?

Regards,
Christos

 

[Wandering]

I am not sure how this could be a huge problem, but that of course is yours
to decide. My understanding is that Office 2003 does not provide the
necessary information to the operating system to to this. These views come
from information provided by the Office Suite and other applications. 2003
was well before Vista...

I doubt reinstalling Office will change anything - upgrading should.

Hopefully, someone else will write and prove me wrong.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Arend

There is no update or tweak available that will allow Office 2003 apps
preview in Vista.

You can get the preview if you save the file as an .rtf, but of course you
will lose all of the formatting for the document.

Another user had an idea about installing the free trial version of Office
2007, which would install all of the preview filters and possibly allow the
Office 2003 files to use these. But he never returned to give us the results
of that test?

Experience the 2007 Microsoft Office system - Products - Microsoft Office
Online: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101741481033.aspx

--

Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

 

[Arend]

Hi again,

---> Another user had an idea about installing the free trial version of
Office
2007, which would install all of the preview filters and possibly allow the
Office 2003 files to use these. But he never returned to give us the results
of that test? <----
I will try this and I let you all know whether it works or not.

By the way, this is not a vista issue but you may be able to help, I have
tried the 2007 office from beta to release version and there is no way ever
to install this software on my computer. There are numerous issues but the
most important is that I have not yet found a way to transfer, from 2003
office, my auto text entries (if you use the developer ribbon to add the
normal.dot you have to do this every time you start the word, as it doesn’t
load automatically) and the FORMATTED autocorrect entries. Moreover outlook
doesn’t anymore use word as email editor and still cannot find a way to
transfer all these (autocorrect text & formatted entries + auto text entries)
to outlook.

Not to mention that you cannot customize the ribbon!!!!! And that you need
to spend days trying to figure out where the developers of Microsoft have
decided to hide the commands!!!!!!!
You don’t need to learn Windows again in order to install vista! But if you
install office 2007 you need to learn everything from the beginning, which I
am not willing to do (and surely other users too).

Regards,
Christos

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Arend

I had the same problem with the new ribbon in office until I found the
following application. This makes customizing the ribbon very easy. Once you
get familiar with the ribbon, you'll never go back to the old style menu
bars that take up the whole screen.

RibbonCustomizer:
http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/index.php


--

Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

Hi again,

---> Another user had an idea about installing the free trial version of
Office
2007, which would install all of the preview filters and possibly allow
the
Office 2003 files to use these. But he never returned to give us the
results
of that test? <----
I will try this and I let you all know whether it works or not.

By the way, this is not a vista issue but you may be able to help, I have
tried the 2007 office from beta to release version and there is no way
ever
to install this software on my computer. There are numerous issues but the
most important is that I have not yet found a way to transfer, from 2003
office, my auto text entries (if you use the developer ribbon to add the
normal.dot you have to do this every time you start the word, as it doesn’t
load automatically) and the FORMATTED autocorrect entries. Moreover
outlook
doesn’t anymore use word as email editor and still cannot find a way to
transfer all these (autocorrect text & formatted entries + auto text
entries)
to outlook.

Not to mention that you cannot customize the ribbon!!!!! And that you need
to spend days trying to figure out where the developers of Microsoft have
decided to hide the commands!!!!!!!
You don’t need to learn Windows again in order to install vista! But if
you
install office 2007 you need to learn everything from the beginning, which
I
am not willing to do (and surely other users too).

Regards,
Christos

 

[Arend]

I have downloaded the application you recommended and I’ll try it. But still
this doesn’t solve my great problem of the settings transfer as described in
my previous post.

Thank you for your replies so far.

Regards,
Christos

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Arend

Your welcome.

My knowledge of Office programs is not very extensive. You may want to post
your original message to one of the office support groups where the office
gurus hang out. Here are links to those groups.

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.office.setup

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.office.misc