At the left end of the Ribbon, in the Panes group, click on Preview Pane, to turn that pane on.In the Ribbon at the top, click the View tab.You can see the preview pictures in Windows Explorer.įirst, follow these steps to enable Preview Pictures: To choose icons, click the arrow for More Options, at the top right of the window.Īfter the 'Save Thumbnails for All Excel Documents' setting is turned on for all Excel files, However, you can see the preview picture in a custom thumbnail, if Excel's Open window is showing icons in Medium, Large or Extra Large size. You can also see preview pictures in Windows Explorer, as described in the next section. To see an Excel file's preview picture, could view it in the Word or PowerPoint Open window. There is a Microsoft support article that says you can't see previews for Excel, Word or PowerPoint, within their own programs. 'This file can't be previewed because of an error in the Microsoft Excel previewer'.However, most of the time, the Preview Pane will show this error message: With the Preview Pane showing, if you select a file in the list, the Preview Pane will occasionally show 'Preview not available'. Click the Preview Pane button at the top right of the window.To see the problem, follow thses steps to show the Preview Pane within Excel: If you open files within Excel for Office 365, you can see file thumbnails, but the Picture Preview doesn't work. At the bottom of the tab, add a check box to 'Save Thumbnails for All Excel Documents'.In the Properties dialog box, click the Summary tab.This change will affect ALL Excel files - you can't change the setting for specific files only, as you could in earlier versions.įollow these steps to allow Preview Pictures for all Excel files: The next step is to change the Preview setting. At the right, click the drop down arrow for Properties.To open the Property dialog box, follow these steps: The first step in changing the Preview Picture setting is to open NOTE: In earlier versions of Excel, a Preview Picture was also available in the Excel Open window, but doesn't work in the current version. In Excel, so you can see a small screen shot of the file contents, when you select a file in the Windows Explorer list. This article explains how to change one of the property settings When you're opening files in Windows Explorer, you can see a list of files in

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