Preview does not work in File Explorer

[XGJ]

Windows 11 doesn't seem to be able to preview files. It would be very helpful when to be able to see previews while organizing/opening files. Using Affinity Designer 2.1.1.

[GarryP]

Make sure that you have “Save thumbnails with documents” set to ON in Settings / General, in each Affinity application – see attached images.

[Dan C]

Hi @XGJ,

Thanks for your report!

I can confirm this is a known issue with the MSIX version of the Affinity V2 apps, which is logged with our development team as a bug.

I will be sure to 'bump' this dev log with your thread now to bring it to our teams attention once again - in the meantime you can install the EXE version of the apps, in order to workaround this issue.

Please uninstall the Affinity V2 apps through Settings > Apps and then download the EXE version using the Also Available : EXE options at the below links:

Photo - https://store.serif.com/update/windows/photo/2/ 
Designer - https://store.serif.com/update/windows/designer/2/ 
Publisher - https://store.serif.com/update/windows/publisher/2/ 

Once downloaded, please install the EXE versions and then restart your PC. You should now hopefully find this Preview Pane works as expected.

I hope this helps

[fernand0n]

Hi @Dan C, any news on this?
I followed your instructions but unfortunately the preview pane still doesn't work. 

Update: It works for files saved after the new installation. So if I open and re-save all the old files, I can preview them. Not ideal, but it helps.

Update 2: Restart the PC and the preview stopped working again. 

[walt.farrell]

21 minutes ago, fernand0n said:

Hi @Dan C, any news on this?
I followed your instructions but unfortunately the preview pane still doesn't work. 

Update: It works for files saved after the new installation. So if I open and re-save all the old files, I can preview them. Not ideal, but it helps.

Update 2: Restart the PC and the preview stopped working again. 

If you're reading this using a desktop or large tablet browser, you can see from the information under Dan's avatar that he is no longer here: "(Ex) Staff". 
If you're reading on a phone, it's harder to see that, but possible if you know all the different methods that Staff posts are shown.

In any case: as far as I know, the reported issue remains unfixed. If you want Serif to look at it again, it would probably be better to start your own topic, especially as Dan's advice did not work for you.

[Jack Sketch]

Can confirm this bug. Win11 desn't show the preview, no matter what installer you use. (EXE or MSIX) The ony way for me was to uninstall V2 and reinstall V1. With older version it works just fine. Fortunately I had actuall backups for my files in V1.

[Chills]

I am on Win 11 23H2   Affinity 2.5.5, and I see thumbnails on all Affinity apps. 

BUT Export to PDF does NOT give me a preview on the PDF.
Any chance of fixing that?

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Chills said:

I am on Win 11 23H2   Affinity 2.5.5, and I see thumbnails on all Affinity apps. 

BUT Export to PDF does NOT give me a preview on the PDF.
Any chance of fixing that?

 

That would be a different issue, so you should create your own topic in the Bugs forum to get it addressed, I think.

[Chills]

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

That would be a different issue, so you should create your own topic in the Bugs forum to get it addressed, I think.

I did just that and the problem has already been solved... (and the solution has nothing to do with Affinity!)  see 

 

 

[Jack Sketch]

I finally got that preview problem of the afdesign-files working. I think it couldn't be a problem at all if you make a clean install on fresh installed Win11. But when you try, like most of us, to upgrade V1 to V2 and you have all three Affinity Apps to upgrade, you will face the problem with corrupt registry entries quite likely. My conclusion is don't relly on Affinity uninstall routines. Use an dedicated uninstaller, that keeps track on changes of registy entries. Further more I investgated also windows file associations and noticed some of them they were cross associated. For example the *.afdesign were associated with the prgram Affinity Photo and so on. After in-depth registry cleaning they were marked as "faulty associations". I removed all of them and only then I installed the fresh Afffinity Apps V2. That is, what worked for me. I think, the problem could be leaky uninstall routines delivered with the package.

[walt.farrell]

13 hours ago, Jack Sketch said:

But when you try, like most of us, to upgrade V1 to V2 and you have all three Affinity Apps to upgrade,

It's unclear what order you're suggesting doing things in, though. You need to have V1 installed when you install V2, or you cannot migrate content and settings. So I hope you would Uninstall later. And many of us keep both V1 and V2 installed, anyway, to facilitate sharing with other users who may not have V2.