OneDrive PDF Thumbnails

The new features in 12.6.3 regarding One Drive work very well for me apart from in one respect.

I use One Drive to store very many PDF files so that I can access them on an Ipad from anywhere.

The problem is that although I can see thumbnails of the these PDFs in Explorer, I cannot in Opus.

When I place PDF files in my One Drive folder, I can see the thumbnails right up to the point where they are exported to One Drive storage off the machine.

The only difference from a standard set-up I have is that I have moved by One Drive folder away from my system drive (default) to another drive. However, it works perfectly well in the new location.

Any ideas how to get the thumbnails? It is a pain having to go into Explorer to see them.

BTW although I cannot see the thumbnails, I can see the little green ticks under the PDF icons to indicate they are available to me.

If the files have green ticks it means they're stored locally (not in the cloud) and so thumbnails should be the same in the OneDrive folder as outside it. Do you see PDF thumbnails in Opus normally?

I do see thumbnails of my PDFs in Opus normally. I have hundreds of them. It is just in the two One Drive sub-directories where I have PDFs that I have the problem.

If the green ticks mean the files are stored locally there are two very strange things happening:

  1. When I put a PDF file into either of these directories I can see the thumbnails with no trouble. After a short time the thumbnail turns into an icon. This, I assumed was because it had been loaded to One Drive.

  2. When I look at One Drive on my I-pad all the files in these directories are there, so they must be on One Drive as my I-pad has no connection to my PC.

If I copy a PDF from the One Drive directory a thumbnail appears in half a second.

As I said the only thing I have done is used Microsoft's instructions to move by One Drive folder structure from my user directory to another drive on my PC.

Another thing to note is this problem only started after the latest Windows 10 update.

I have been hacking round and I have discovered if I store JPG pictures in a folder on One Drive the thumbnails appear.

I have also watched carefully when I change to the PDF directory. I can detect a slight flicker on the thumbnails as if there was an attempt to create them. I have checked the permissions on the folder and they are fine.

A green tick means the file is on your local machine. It will be in the cloud as well which is why you also see it on your ipad. If you right-click on it and choose 'Free up space' the file will be deleted from your local machine and only be stored in the cloud.

I have done what you suggested. Now all the files have a small cloud icon, but, unfortunately no thumbnails, just a flickering of the thumbnails when I press f5 to refresh the display.

I can see the pdf previews in Explorer.

I'm not sure then, sorry. Opus doesn't generate PDF thumbnails itself so we have little control over this.

Interestingly, for me OneDrive is the only folder that I see PDF thumbnails in (both in Explorer and in Opus). But, I don't have anything like Adobe Reader installed. It looks like in the latest Windows 10 Microsoft added PDF thumbnail support for OneDrive but not generally.

I am afraid the situation here with One Drive and Opus goes from bad to worse. It is bad enough that I cannot see my PDF thumbnails, but when I used the "Clear Space" option on a folder a message from windows 10 came up saying that DOpus was downloading files.

Lo and behold, 10 minutes later the files were back on my local drive. This happened time after time until I discovered by chance how to in Windows 10 parlance "kill the app DOpus".

Incidentally, just to make sure, I returned the One Drive folder to its default position in my Users folder, but I still can't see the thumbnails.

I even uninstalled Adobe Reader, as Jon said he had not got it on his machine and he could see the thumbnails.

One Drive is now and integral part of Windows 10 and very, very useful, it is a great shame that DOpus - an Explorer replacement after all - does not allow me to see what Explorer patently does.

As you can see, I do not get what you get. What I do see, as I said before, is that when I refresh the page the PDF icons flash as though something is happening, but it never does. Could it be some sort of permissions problem?

Knowing how easily the Windows registry can get screwed up. I have even done an in-place re-install, but to no avail.

I don't really know. Every PDF program seems to break every other PDF program, and now there seems to be (minimal) support within Windows for PDF thumbnails as well the whole thing is a mess. But it's specific to your computer and not really anything we can help with.

Thank you for your thoughts. I am just going to have to give up on this one. I have tried everything I can think of. Perhaps I will remove all the applications that have anything to do with PDF files and see what happens.

Shot in the dark, but you could try and switch your preview handler (or whatever the heck is generating the thumbnails) from Acrobat back to Windows. This is assuming that you currently have Acrobat registered as the thumbnail handler (in Preferences->General). Or, enable the Acrobat thumbnail generator if it's not currently enabled (I think by default it isn't).

Or, install a third-party PDF viewer (the one by Tracker Software is a possibility), and try what happens if you allow that to render thumbnails.

Don't forget you need to install a fix for Adobe's thumbnails to work in 64-bit apps, if using Adobe Reader for that. (And Acrobat isn't a substitute for Reader; you need both for some functionality, if going the Adobe route.)

With Adobe's 32-bit-only thumbs on a system without the fix installed, thumbs generated and cached by a 32-bit app may appear to work in other apps, just for those files, because they're just displaying the cached versions.

Everything about PDF on Windows is a mess, and the new version of OneDrive complicates things further by generating thumbnails for cloud files via a web service which gives different results (not just whether there is a thumbnail but how it looks if there is one) to that of local files. But understanding all the components of the mess can help solve it.

(At least until everyone wakes up and stops using paper-based file formats. :))

I generate thumbnails with Mystic Thumbs as it can make PDF thumbnails with transparency, which is important to me. Of course, I am assuming I am using Mystic Thumbs, who knows, it appears to be a black art?

Pirx, I am not sure I understand where to set the Thumbnail generator in Preferences>General, but as the thumbnails work on Jon Potter's when he does not have Acrobat reader installed seems to render this a blind alley.

I was not aware that you still needed the 64 bit fix with Adobe reader any more. Perhaps installing Reader and the fix might be worth a try

Try reinstalling whichever software you want to make the thumbnails, e.g. Mystic Thumbs if that's the one you want. That may repair things (until the next time some PDF software is installed or updated and breaks them again).

No, in my experience that Acrobat fix is no longer needed with the latest version of Acrobat. At least on my machine things seem to be working fine with Acrobat 2017 Pro. Well, as fine as anything ever works on Windows 10. Having said that, I fully agree with Leo's comments on the mess that is PDF thumbnail support, or actually any thumbnail support in Windows. Make that: the complete and utter, hopeless mess that is Windows 10. Oh, and I didn't know I was missing anything if I only have Acrobat installed.

As an aside, in the face of all of this, I am seriously considering switching to Mac OS, this after almost two decades of Windows-only use. You know what the main obstacle is at this point? No Directory Opus for Mac OS, or anything that would come even vaguely close. Even Windows Explorer is a godsend compare to that pathetic Finder they give you on Mac OS...

The idea to set that option in Acrobat Pro (and in your case perhaps uncheck the PDF thumbnail option in Mystic Thumbs) is to see if Acrobat's thumbnail generator does not cause the issues you currently seem to be seeing with Mystic thumbs. Like I said, it's a shot in the dark, but it's an easy fix if it works, and easy to revert back from if it doesn't.

I totally removed Mystic Thumbs from my system. I disabled all plugins in Opus. At that point, I was getting no PDF thumbnails generated. Emptied thumbnail cache.

I then turned on Adobe Reader in the plug-ins and started to get thumbnails for PDFs. I could NOT get thumbnails on One Drive. Emptied thumbnail cache

I turned off Adobe Reader in the plug-ins and re-installed Mystic Thumbs. PDF thumbnails were created at a very fast rate. However I can still not get thumbnails in One Drive.

I just wonder if I am chasing the wrong problem here.

If I place a pdf file on the One drive folder I can immediately see the thumbnail. It remains there until the second it is upload to One Drive. Then a refresh of the thumbnails results in its disappearance.

A further refresh of a selected thumbnail results in the screen flickering as though an attempt is being made to create the thumbnail. Could something be preventing the thumbnail being written to the Opus window permissions perhaps - although judging from the properties of the files that seems unlikely; or could it be some kind of networking issue.?
Anyone any thoughts. I do hate to give up on a problem almost as much as I hate the thought of the next step - a fresh install of Windows 10 and all thee hassle that brings in its wake.