Word 2007: preview pane doesn't work

[Daniel]

Hi everybody,

I am now using Word 2007 user, on a new PC with Vista.

It seems that the document preview feature doesn't work. When I perform an
"Open" operation and select a document, nothing appears in the right hand
side preview pane.

(I should also point out that it doesn't seem to wok with Excel 2007)

Any particular setting I should modify?

Anyone?

Thanks in advance for your kind help.
Best Rgds,
Daniel

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Evidently Vista's preview trumps Word's. You can enable previews in Vista
itself, I believe.

 

[Daniel]

Hi Suzanne,

thks for your message.

what is funny is that I can preview in Word Excel spreadsheets, pictures and
all kinds of documents, except Word documents.

With the Vista explorer I can preview everything, it seems.

any clue? Is it a known bug?

Brgds,
Daniel

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It's not a bug; it's "by design."

 

[Daniel]

Hello Suzanne,

sorry to bother you again.

"By design"? What do you mean? How come one cannot preview in Word the Word
documents? How come in Excel one CAN preview the Excel spreadsheets? I am
trying to understand the logic which could explain this design choice.

I really do think the preview feature is indispensable and I do miss it.
When I am in Word it bothers me to have to open the Vista Explorer to go
thru and preview my Word documents and then open the one I need.

Do I miss something?

With all my Best,
Daniel

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I don't know who made the decision, but we were just told that Vista would
take over a lot of the features of previous versions of Word/Office (such as
Speech Recognition), and the preview was one of them. Preview still works
for Word 2007 under Windows XP; the Open and Save dialogs there also retain
the Places Bar, which I believe is absent (or at least different) under
Vista.

There's some hype about this at
http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/getworkdone/computingtips.mspx.

OTOH, there's a thread at
http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Word/microsoft.public.word.docmanagement/2007-07/msg02209.html
that suggests that this may be a bug after all; another at
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3360282-1.php. There's more that may
be useful at
http://www.walkernews.net/2007/07/09/vista-preview-pane-vs-detail-pane-revisited/

Herb Tyson seems to have some experience with this; perhaps he'll weigh in
here.

 

[Daniel]

Thank you so much, Suzanne, for your detailed answer.

I also feel it can be a bug.

I just realized it doesn't work in PowerPoint either.

As for Excel, it was working fine this morning. Now it doesn't...

In other words, the main Office applications can, in their Open | Preview
pane, display all documents except those created in the application in
question. Crazy, isn't it ?

Well, I hope MS comes with an update or hotfix soon, for it is a most useful
feature.

If you hear about a proper solution, i.e. not a workaround, please be so
kind as to post it.

best regards,
Daniel

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I did copy Herb Tyson on my last post, but he said "real work" had
intervened, and he might not get here for a day or two. Perhaps he'll have
something to add.