I recently moved from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Now I'm seeing problems with thumbnails not being created for files on OneDrive when a folder is shown locally in Dopus.
I also have that "cardboard box" icon overlay on almost every file, which I didn't seem to have in Windows 10. It seems that this icon symbolizes that the file is only saved online in OneDrive and not currently downloaded to the local hard drive.
When I click on a thumbnail, the file obviously is downloaded because it is then shown in the preview pane as in below screenshot.
However there is still no thumbnail created unless I hit F5.
What's more, on hitting F5 I would expect thumbnails to be created for all images in the currently viewed folder, which however is not the case. I believe this used to be the case in Windows 10.
Admittedly, it's not a Dopus problem, at least not entirely, because Windows Explorer and VoidTools Everything seem to behave quite similar. However, I would expect that at least Dopus would create a thumbnail as soon as the file is downloaded, and not only after hitting F5.
Has anyone seen this and managed to improve thumbnail creation behavior?
Looking at the icon shown, something has grabbed the JPG filetype.
As far as I know, once a file is on OneDrive, you will get the thumbnail that the OneDrive service sends you, even if the file is cached locally. The very latest DOpus builds now also (at least for me) reliably cache those thumbnails.
So an app you installed with this icon seems to inihibit that process.
The situation looks pretty similar in Windows Explorer. However, Windows Explorer does not even show a preview in the preview pane, and not even for the selected file (which is downloaded and present on the hard drive).
The files are all proper JPEGs and the situation is the same for other file types like PNG etc.
Seems OneDrive’s thumbnailer is broken in that case. Not something we have any control over (other than if we downloaded all the files and thumbnailed them locally, which would mean they couldn’t stay offline).
I went and changed the standard file handler from Faststone Image Viewer to Windows Photo Viewer.
After doing this, a few more thumbnails appeared instantly, even for files with cardbox overlay that thus are only online in OneDrive and not locally
However, this process then stopped, and now it doesn't load any more thumbnails, no matter what folder is displayed and no matter if it is displayed in Windows Explorer or in Dopus.
After much searching, I found the below explanation by Microsoft about the cardboard box icon. Not a very intuitive icon for an error indicator if you ask me. Anyway, maybe the cardboard box and the thumbnail problem go away after a couple of reboots. I will keep the thread posted.
Brown box on Desktop icons
A brown box over your Windows Desktop icons can be caused by an issue with Windows Explorer.
To resolve the issue, restart Windows Explorer [...]
Other than explained by Microsoft, it's not only on desktop icons. I have the cardbox icon basically on every single file on my entire OneDrive.
While the above "brown box" issue seems to be related to OneDrive for Business only and could be caused by a company restriction/policy, I am seeing another issue related to file previews not being generated for my Personal OneDrive.
In the screenshot, we can see that while Explorer to the left shows a preview of the selected file (although the file doesn't even seem to be downloaded), Opus to the right only shows the thumbnail in the preview pane.
Is there a way to make Opus show the full file preview either in a similar way as Explorer does, or by actually downloading the file if a thumbnail is clicked?
I think we intentionally prevented the preview pane from triggering offline files to be downloaded, as people complained about it when it did (and people like to leave the viewer pane on all the time and click on whatever they want to without having to worry about it downloading everything).
You can manage whether a file is stored locally (e.g. select-all, then make available on this device).
OK, so maybe it could be investigated how Windows Explorer seems to be able to show the full-size preview "without downloading" the file? I.e. the file retaining the cloud icon even after the full size preview has been shown.
Probably Explorer downloads the file to some temporary destination, so Opus could do something similar.
I believe this feature request will be increasingly relevant as more and more people tend to store most or all of their files on OneDrive.
Difficult to know what Explorer does, since it is not open-source.
It may be asking OneDrive to generate the thumbnail, although I'd expect Opus to do the same unless it has been configured not to show thumbnails in the viewer. (Can't tell the image source in your screenshot, as the image is cropped to hide the viwer titlebar.)
Please note that this part of the feature request is not about thumbnails but about full-size previews.
In my view, full-size previews for online-only files could be achieved by downloading the file to be previewed to a temporary directory.
I can't imagine Explorer doing it differently, as there’s no way to show a full-size preview other than downloading the file, be it via API or directly.
Looking at this in more detail, I was wrong about the viewer pane: It will download offline files if asked to display them, as you're asking for.
People have asked for it to NOT do that, but I don't think we've made a change/option yet. (I think the change I was thinking of was to prevent pre-loading of the next/previous file in the standalone viewer when the files are offline. It doesn't affect the file the viewer or preview pane has been told to view, which is always opened.)
My bet is that OneDrive on your machine is configured to not allow Opus to trigger automatic file downloads. If so, you'd just need to change the configuration to correct that.
In Windows 11, that's controlled under (in Windows, not Opus) Settings > Privacy & Security > Automatic File Downloads
Thank you for the update. I’m noticing different behaviors between my personal OneDrive and my OneDrive for Business accounts. In personal OneDrive (see screenshot, to the left), thumbnails display even for cloud-only image files. However, it takes significantly longer (minutes) compared to Windows Explorer (which displays the same thumbnails within seconds).
In OneDrive for Business (screenshot, to the right), no thumbnails are shown, and all file icons have the ominous cardboard box overlay. Clicking an image icon downloads the image and shows a preview, but the thumbnail only appears after refreshing the current Lister with F5.
It seems that my company enforces a policy in OneDrive for Business that somehow prevents automatic thumbnail downloads for cloud files. The policy aims to prevent employees from downloading large numbers of files for offline access, but has the unintended side effect of blocking thumbnail previews.
If I view the same OneDrive for Business folder (bottom right) in FastStone Image Viewer, the program downloads all images in the folder in the background, showing all thumbnails after a short delay.
It would be useful if Directory Opus could also offer an option to download all currently displayed image files to generate thumbnails. Is there a way to do this? Pressing F5 doesn’t do it.
If the files are offline, Windows should ask OneDrive to generate thumbnails for them and send them back without downloading the actual files. It’s possible that has been turned off by an admin maybe.
(It also won’t work for all file formats, since the OneDrive servers only know how to handle a few common file types. But it should work for PNG files, assuming they aren’t really WebP with the wrong extension of anything like that,)
If you want to download all files so they exist locally, the option to do that should be in the right-click context menu for the files.
Unfortunately, that’s not really a practical solution for two reasons.
First, this context menu option isn’t even available because the administrator has disabled it.
Second, even if it were available, it would be a cumbersome workaround. I work with tens of thousands of folders and need to access images in various folders many times a day.
What I'd really need would be an option for Dopus to download all image files in the current Lister, similar to the functionality mentioned above with FastStone Image Viewer.
But the whole point of offline files is that they don't get downloaded just from something browsing the folder they're in (else they wouldn't stay offline and may as well be stored locally from the start). And OneDrive is meant to provide thumbnails without needing to download local copies of the files.
The problems here seem due to how OneDrive has been configured, since it's apparently opting out of providing the thumbnails you want.
If you just want to make all the files download to the local machine, that should be possible by doing something that will cause all of the files to be opened and have their data read. For example, use Tools > Find Files to search for file content and in/below the directory the files are in, and it should download them all to do the search (assuming OneDrive isn't also configured to block Opus from triggering automatic downloads; if it has, you'd have to make something that can trigger the downloads do so on each file).
This doesn't work, unfortunately. Opus only searches the image files' contents that are already downloaded and not the ones that are only online.
Also, Opus doesn't show the thumbnail of an image file even after it has been clicked on and downloaded (by being shown in the preview pane). It only does so after refreshing the current Lister by hitting F5.
I really wished there was a way to force thumbnail generation for a current Lister or for a selection of files in Opus.
