Windows 10: photos won't display in the preview pane when I click on the thumbnail

I've had this issue in Windows 10 and upgraded to Windows 11 Pro version 23H2 which did not fix the problem. My photos won't display in the preview pane when I click on the thumbnail. This is happening on both my laptop and my Desktop. The laptop will eventually display them with a bit of patients, but they very rarely display in the preview pane on my desktop. My Photo folder is large 560 GB but I thought I bought systems that could handle this. I have 1 TB storage. The system is 12th Gen IntelR Core TM i7-12700KF 3.60 GHz. I can't find the info on it but I did ask for a high e

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Preview Pane for Images/Some Thumbnails/Photos not Working Only on OneDrive Folder

The preview pane and thumbnails as well as the Photos app are not working, but only on my OneDrive folder. It works fine on an exact copy of the same files that are not in the OneDrive synced folder structure (and known to Windows as being OneDrive).

• Open OneDrive Folder, navigate to photos directory
• Sony Raw images (.ARW) do not show thumbnails. (I have the Sony plug in installed)
• Double click on a raw file, Photos says "We can't open this file."
• Click on a jpeg file, and with preview window turned on, no preview appears
• Double click on jpeg file, opens fine in Photos, and then the preview window image appears

• Navigate to a directory that is not synced to OneDrive
• Sony Raw thumbnails show up fine. They also show up in the preview window.
• Double click on Raw file and Photos opens it up without problems

• Back to OneDrive photo directory
• Copy raw file to desktop
• Immediately the thumbnail appears and the file can be opened with Photos. The same file that it can't open from Explorer in the OneDrive directory

This is only happening on my desktop. My laptop is fine. Both same versions of Windows 10 Version 1709 OS Build 16299.19

 

preview pane and thumbnails

In File Explorer, when I search through folders, some jpg files show as thumbnails, some as icons. Some show up in preview pane, some don't. there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason or consistency to it. Please don't simply instruct me to select thumbnails
or preview pane in the view tab, because I've already explained that there's no consistency to it.

 

Thumbnail previews in WIndows 11

Hello Andie,

Thumbnail previews for images are indeed still available in Windows 11. They are not on folders anymore, but you never could really see anything from them anyways. Double check using the tutorial below to make sure you have thumbnail previews enabled and turned on. This will also depend on the default app you have set to open these file types and if the app supports thumbnails. Usually using the built-in Photos app is best for this.

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/enabl...previews-in-file-explorer-in-windows-11.2272/

If thumbnail previews is enabled and turned on with the Photos app as default and still not seeing them, then you could see if clearing and resetting the thumbnail cache below may help.

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/clear-and-reset-thumbnail-cache-in-windows-11.2051/

In addition, you could enable the preview pane in File Explorer below to help make seeing previews of the images easier.

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/show-or-hide-preview-pane-in-file-explorer-in-windows-11.1776/