Desktop icons display...

[salvinorum]

Hello. Help needed!

A week ago I noticed something on my desktop. My shortcuts that point to my PDF ebooks that I read somehow stopped showing the regular PDF Adobe Icon, but instead showed the preview of the first page of each book.

I really like this, but I cannot seem to figure out how it happened, and how to reproduce it on other icons. Since then, I have added new shortcuts to ebooks, identical to the others, but they only show the regular adobe icon.

Furthermore, I screwed around with the "preview" icons, and when I do, they revert back to "normal".

I would love to know how to get a desktop icon to preview the first page of an ebook instead of showing the regular icon related to .pdf extension.

Thank you!

 

[sergiogarcia9]

Try to see this thread
live icon preview? - Vista Forums

Also see this:
http://social.answers.microsoft.com...p/thread/010cdeb6-8ddb-4da5-9522-3c9b69d5ebfd

 

[gforce23]

Hey salvinorum, welcome to the forums. This is probably what you're looking for.

 

[salvinorum]

Thanx a lot guys, hope it helps, I haven't checked your helpers yet, but will post on the success/failure of the mission.

Thank you for the welcome.

 

[salvinorum]

Hmm, none of the above helped so far. I'll keep on trying to find the answer.

BTW, does this live icon preview only work for .pdf files (well, not even those on my machine), or should it work for any document type file. For example, it doesn't work for my txt files or doc files either.

EDIT.. now that is straight weird. After the fixes above, I tried to save-as a file in pdf, and within pdf in the save box, under tiles, it shows all my ebooks on my desktop as a preview. So I saved the new file thinking perhaps it will work. I checked the desktop, and funnily enough, the ebook I just saved did not work, but three of my other icons turned and showed the preview!!

I don't get it.

 

[tw33k]

I don't get it either. Mine aren't on my desktop but if I view large icons, they display the first page of the pdf. try saving the pdfs to another folder (not on the desktop) and see if that works.
And I've only seen it work for pdfs not txt files etc

 

[skinejime]

It works with Powerpoint documents as PDF and probably many others.

There is a setting that turns this feature on/off. If you right click on My Computer (or Computer as it is called in Windows 7) and choose Properties > Advanced system settings > Settings (under the Performance section) There is an option for "Show thumbnails instead of icons."

Turning this on/off changes the icons on the desktop.

Thanks!

 

[ruthlmut]

That's not it

I tried that setting, but it does not have any influence wether the pdf icon shows as thumbnail of the first page. On my PC, this shows up totally random, while on my laptop I can't display the thumbnails at all.
Maybe the reason is that on the desktop I have Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional installed. The laptop has just the free Adobe Reader installed.