Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983097 for workarounds.
"error in the Microsoft Word previewer"
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Anonymous
Is there a fix for this problem?
I have Office 2010 operating on Windows 7 64 bit
When I select File >> Open and click on a Word file (new format or 2003 format) the preview pane has a message as follows
"This file can't be previewed because of an error in the Microsoft Word previewer"
Even if I create a new document and save it, trying to see it in the File Open dialog box gives the same message
Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
2012-02-15T22:23:59+00:00 Buy Microsoft and order the programmers to fix it! ;-)
Just for kicks, I opened OpenOffice's writing program to see if the problem occurs there. The first three Word files I clicked on previewed just fine. Upon clicking the fourth one, however, I got the familiar "This file can't be previewed because of an error in the Microsoft Word previewer."
FWIW, I *never* get the error when I use Windows Explorer for previewing. So, if it's an issue with Window Explorer, then it must be in whatever API Word and other programs use to access Windows Explorer's resources.
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Anonymous
2012-02-15T21:48:00+00:00 I don't want a work-around I want my Word-Program-to-work. I don't want to use another application(Explorer) to preview what should work in Word. I don't want to use Excel to preview Word and I don't want to use Word to preview Excel. I also do not want to create an email message and attach a message so I can preview it from there. One post said it was a Windows problem and not a Word problem. OMG. So if that is true why would I use Windows Explorer instead of Word???
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Anonymous
2012-02-15T18:29:57+00:00 There is one time when preview DOES work.
When I want to attach a Word 2010 document to an email, the preview feature always works for the file I am attaching.
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Anonymous
2012-02-14T13:54:00+00:00 If you'll check back to the beginning of this thread, you'll see that the very first reply to this issue said: The work-around for now is to use Windows Explorer when you need to preview files of a particular type.
Windows Explorer is able to preview Word (and other Office files) perfectly--including displaying equations. For me, that's a whole lot easier and more direct than installing and using yet another 3rd party application.
Another thing to note is that the previewer issue isn't a problem for everyone, and doesn't occur all of the time. If Microsoft can't make the issue happen on their own computers, then it's hard for them to fix it. It's hard to fix a problem you don't see--ask any auto mechanic. The problem is intermittent for me. Right now, previewing in Word is broken. Two minutes ago, however, it was working just fine.