Thumbnails for MS Office files

[Phil St-Amour]

I am running MS Office 365 (version 16) and I can no longer make new thumbnails in TP for Excel .xls files and Word .docx files. The Thumbnails made previously are still there but when I try to make a new thumbnail, I get an OLE error:

The Excel file type is configured as follows (and .docx in a similar way):

I believed this is the same file type configuration I had previously when I could make thumbnails. Maybe something has changed in Office 356?
Any help would be appreciated.

[Daan van Rooijen]

> Maybe something has changed in Office 356?

Might well be, or maybe OLE is blocked through one of the many OLE-related security patches that MS has released. However, have you tried if any other usable OLE servers are available in the pull-down menu (in the filetype config) where it currently says "Excel.sheet.16"?

In the distant past (I don't know if it's still true) Office programs had a 'Save Preview Picture' option in File | Properties. When a document had such a preview image embedded, ThumbsPlus could read it when you had 'Load file using' set to 'Internal'. I'm only mentioning this for completeness sake - even if it still works, it won't be a satisfying solution for most people because few documents will contain a preview.

[Phil St-Amour]

Hi Daan,
Thanks for your quick answer. I've tried all of the OLE servers available for Excel and Word files in the pull-down menu but I get the same error. I don't see any option like 'Save Preview Picture' for Word or Excel files either. It's not a big deal but I did like to see the thumbnail preview to help select or find Office files.
I guess ThumbPlus can only do so much! Thanks, again. Cheers.

[Daan van Rooijen]

> I don't see any option like 'Save Preview Picture' for Word or Excel files either.

That would be in Word or Excel itself. For the how-to, see https://www.thoughtco.com/save-preview-image-with-word-documents-3539892

> I guess ThumbPlus can only do so much!

Yes.. well, hopefully someone else chimes in with a solution. There might still be an obscure registry setting or some other fix that would re-enable it (like there once was for html files, which had the same problem).

[Phil St-Amour]

I found that setting in Word 2016 to “Save Thumbnails for All Word Documents” and it does work. It increases the file size but I can also see the thumbnails in Windows Explorer with the view set to show icons. Thanks, Daan.