Windows 10: No Word document preview in file explorer

​Since updating to win 10 anniversary edition I cannot get a preview of Word documents in File Explorer - all other files show a preview. This is on a Sony Vaio all in one PC with Office 2010. The mystery is that I also have a Vaio laptop running the identical operating system and apps and this does have doc previews. I have tried repairing the Word app and have compared all the settings on each computer but nothing brings back doc previews on the all in one - get the message "this file cannot be previewed". I would like to uninstall / reinstall Office but I do not have a disk and cannot find an official download of the 2010 version for which I have the key. Microsoft support were polite but stumped.

Any suggestions welcome

:)

 

Cannot preview Word Files

When I turn on the Preview Pane in Windows Explorer and try to preview a Word Document, I receive the error:

"Word could not create the work file. Check the temp environment variable."

and sometimes the error:

"Access denied. Contact your administrator."

PDF preview works. Are you supposed to be able to preview Excel documents? If so, I also cannot preview those, but I receive no error message; the preview pane is just blank.

 

windows 10 explorer preview pane disfunctional

I am having the same problem, although slightly different.

With MS Word 365 (up to date in all respects) OPEN, I open File Explorer, locate the document I need to edit, click it once, and the Preview Pane displays...nothing, just white. I then double-click the document and rather than the instance of MS Word that
is currently OPEN and in the background, Win10 opens a second instance of MS Word before opening the document for editing. And when I say it opens a new instance, it opens a completely separate MS Word, it starts with the blue box in the middle of the screen,
the Word logo appears, it starts running all the add-in items, and then displays the document for editing.

What doesn't make sense is that up until a few days ago, the Preview Pane worked WITHOUT my having MS Word open, which is how it's supposed to work and has always worked for over 10 years now. It was only after my new HP Laptop had a hard drive issue a
few days ago (new, have had it for less than 2 months, hard drive screws up)... Anyway, I had to restore Win10 and it dumped Office 365 along with all my other secondary apps. When I reloaded Office 365, the File Explorer Preview Pane no longer displayed
Word document previews (or previews for any of the other MS Office apps). Also, side note - I've never been able to get Adobe to display previews of PDF files in Win10 File Explorer either, even though PDF previews always worked PRIOR to Win10.

So, with regard to the previous posting, this is NOT a normal issue...

"Essentially, there is no proper fix to the problem. The workaround requires that you open the program for which you want to see previews in File Explorer. For example, as long as you have Word open, you should be
able to see previews in File Explorer. "

I have a suspicion that it's a known Win10 bug and Microsoft just hasn't gotten around to fixing it yet, so until then they are telling everyone "... What? Preview worked before but not now? That's crazy talk... It's always been this way."

 

SOLVED - uninstalled Office - reinstalled - now get previews in File Explorer