is there a way to preview a libre doc or spreadsheet in the windows explorer preview pane?

[teknovice]

sorry if this has been answered.
in windows explorer, with the preview pane open, if I click on a .odt or .ods file to highlight without opening, it doesnt give me a preview.

i have libreoffice 4.4.1.2, and openoffice 3.2.1 installed and its running on Win7

if i create a .odt or .ods file with openoffice (I named the file oo.odt), there is a preview.
if i open it with libreoffice and then save it (renaming the file to lo.odt, but without making any changes to the document), there is no preview.
if I then open lo.odt with openoffice and save it (again renaming the file, this time to oo2.odt, but without making any changes) the document will now preview.

the file extension (.odt and .ods) has not changed but somehow the preview handler knows when one file is saved by libreoffice or if its saved by openoffice. is there a way to set windows explorer to use the openoffice preview handler in both situations?

[petermau]

Which software have you set to open your .ost, or.ods files, LibO or OO?
OpenOffice and LibreOffice use the same open document format (.odt, .ods). However your LibO and OO settings will probably not be the same. You will have different paths for storing the documents. I would expect your Windows Explorer to be set to default to either OO or LibO and expect you would specifically need to tell windows if you wish to use the non-default Writer for .ods.

You would have the same problem on my Linux-Mint Mate system where my default is LibO 5.0 and I need to select 4.4 or 5.1 when I need to open the .ods with other than my default. I do not have OO installed .

It is possible your old OO is still using the older 1.0 versions of .odt or .ods and hence is unable to open your LibO files which defaults to the more modern 1.2. If that is the problem you can set LibO to use the older standards.

You may find you do not have the same problem if you default to LibO to open the files with Windows Explorer, as it will open all the OO files… this may not answer your exact problem, but perhaps give a few clues…Peter

[oweng]

May also be a problem (regression) early in the v4.4 series. An upgrade (if possible) to v4.4.7.2 would be revealing.

[JohnD]

I have the same problem. Running Windows 10
After a few experiments I have found that some of my older .odt documents display just fine, however the newer ones do not. There are no LibreOffice or OpenOffice Preview Handlers in my windows registry, only Microsoft Office ones. So - I believe the answer given by petermau (paragraph 3) is correct. The version of the odt standard does make a difference. When I open an older version file with Microsoft Word every thing works ok. But, when I try to open a newer LibreOffice file in MS Word I get an error message saying the file is corrupt. (Continuing past the error messages and MS Word seems to load a simple file correctly despite the error messages.)

I really never use the Windows preview anyway and for a preview the LibreOffice Start Screen works pretty good.

But - If you really need the Windows preview, it looks like a trade-off of having to use the older standard.

To use the older standard —Menu - Tools - Options - Load/Save - General - Default File Format and ODF Settings

[Ballroom]

My System is Windows 10, beneath Apache Open Office (4.1.3) and since few days libre office 5.0.3 is MS Word 2007 installed.
I have the same problem, which is quite disgusting. I am coming from Apache OpenOffice and have now Libre Office installed because it delivers an additonal trick to it, since the files can be stored as “Microsoft Word 2007-2013 Open Document”- format, what isn´t possible with Apache Open Office. But that also is no sufficient solution.
The problem is, that only ODF 1.0/1.1 -files are previewable with Windows Explorer, if You do not have the newest MS Office or MS Word installed, which since Office 2013 or 2016 is capable of handling ODF 1.2-files:

After - without success in form of previewability - having tried some manipulations in the Apache Open Office manifest.xml - files, which are found with windows explorer-search, it seems to me the manifest.xml-file of every single odt-Dokument (which is a zipped xml) in ODF 1.2-format is the problem based on the program-codes of Apache OO and Libre Office.

Momentary the only semi-“solution” for previewability without newest MS Office installed seems to be, to store the files in ODF 1.0 or 1.1 -format or - in my case (having ms word 2007 installed) - to store them (beneath odt-1.2-format additionally) in “Microsoft Word 2007-2013 Open Document”- format with Libre Office. ODF-1.0/1.1-files and (in my case) “Microsoft Word 2007-2013 Open Document”-files are previewable then. But the problem with this is, that I would have to treat each of my about 2000 ODT-1.2-files (produced since 2013) this way, what isn´t possible and that - if doing so with a smaller number of my latest ODT-1.2-files say of the last month, it would change the “last change”-time-attribute of those files, which I need to stay in original forms and row in Windows Explorer for my orientation and my work-process, cause I have to be able to see, when and how I changed the content of those text-files.

Before finding that not really satisfying semi-“solution”, I found a profound discussion of the whole problem here:
107602 – framework: Implement ODF document preview for Windows Explorer

[vrokic]

Add folder to windows indexing and that is it

[mikekaganski]

Interesting, how is this related to the original question?