"error in the Microsoft Word previewer"

Is there a fix for this yet?

I still have this problem ALL THE TIME, and this is a new computer. My problem is that Word 2010 previewer used to work in windows explorer, but stopped working. Word itself still works.

curiously, adobe acrobat previewer still works, but some of the details changed. I used to be able to pull up a file being previewed and save any changes, but now it will not overwrite the file; i have to change the file being previewed, and only then can I save the edits.

Furthermore, all of these functions used to work, but stopped working. The computer itself is only a month old. Problem may have started after I installed the office home and business keycard.

You're quite fortunate, Terry. I almost always use Windows Explorer to avoid the problem since I'm so used to it not working. I can't see any pattern to when it doesn't work. I just opened Word on my Dell laptop (8GB of RAM, running the 64 bit versions of Office & Windows), pressed Ctrl+O, and previewing worked fine. I opened a file and tried Ctrl+O again, and got the error message. I closed the file. Same error message. I closed Word and restarted it. Same error message. I closed Word again and restarted it, preview suddenly works.

The problem occurs in safe mode as well as when running Word as administrator. There's no logic to when it works and when it doesn't work.

I will say that it works least often on my desktop machine, in which I have the most mixed environment. I have 12 GB of RAM, 64-bit version of Windows 7, 32-bit version of Office 2010, and Word 2007.  Previewing Word documents from within Word hardly ever works on this computer, but it does occasionally work. So, the mixed environment isn't what's causing the problem.

I've observed the issue on at least a dozen computers running Office 2010 and either Vista or Windows 7. After working for a few minutes, I've always been successful in eventually getting the error message to appear. My guess is that the intermittent nature makes this problem especially hard to track down & fix.

Herb Tyson Microsoft Word MVP

Herb Tyson Word Bible Blog

Thanks Herb. That seems annoyingly strange. I’ll keep an eye open for the problem, but I don’t recall seeing it since I switched to Windows 7 and Office 2010.

Terry

"Herb Tyson [MVP]" wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...

The issue is intermittent, Terry, which makes it hard to track down. I have three computers sitting in front of me right now, with the following combinations:

Offce 2010 64 and Windows 7 64, 8GB of RAM

Office 2010 32 and Windows 7 64, 12 GB of RAM (Also have Word 2007 running on this computer)

Office 2010 32 and Windows 7 (starter) 32, 1 GB of RAM

All three sometimes exhibit the problem, and other times not. If I play with it by switching folders and sampling different .doc/docx files, the problem eventually occurs. (Office 2010 is the retail version, so it's not a beta issue... and none of these computers ever had the beta version of Office 2010 installed.)

Herb Tyson Microsoft Word MVP Herb Tyson Word Bible Blog

Terry Farrell

The issue is intermittent, Terry, which makes it hard to track down. I have three computers sitting in front of me right now, with the following combinations:

Offce 2010 64 and Windows 7 64, 8GB of RAM

Office 2010 32 and Windows 7 64, 12 GB of RAM (Also have Word 2007 running on this computer)

Office 2010 32 and Windows 7 (starter) 32, 1 GB of RAM

All three sometimes exhibit the problem, and other times not. If I play with it by switching folders and sampling different .doc/docx files, the problem eventually occurs. (Office 2010 is the retail version, so it's not a beta issue... and none of these computers ever had the beta version of Office 2010 installed.)

Herb Tyson Microsoft Word MVP

Herb Tyson Word Bible Blog