Windows 10: Thumbnails not showing for most pictures in OneDrive folders

Hi,


So I have pictures, and their thumbnails are showing just fine in regular folders, but once I put them in a OneDrive folder, the thumbnail just disappears after the picture is synced.


A weird thing is not all the pictures are affected, some are spared and the thumbs are working. I looked at properties and ownership rules and can't find any difference between those that work and those that don't.


I've been having this issue for something like 2 years, whether it's in public release or Insider builds of Windows. I've seen many posts about that issue on the Internet, but never a working solution (resetting Onedrive or disabling files-on-demand don't work), and never an acknowledgement that the issue is known by MSFT and worked on.


I've also reported it on the insider hub.




:)

 

Thumbnail previews do not appear in OneDrive folders

(Can't seem to post this to OneDrive so reverting to Windows)

My Documents on my machine is configured in my OneDrive folder system. All data is saved in OneDrive and then synchronized to the Cloud. Several months ago, I lost the ability to "reliably" see Thumbnail previews of images in my picture folders. Rather
than seeing a thumbnail of the picture, all I see are icons. In a folder that may contain 100 picture files, there may be 5 or 10 thumbnails... The rest show a standard icon. I have tried every trouble shooting method shared on the net and from Microsoft.
I just spent several hours working with the Windows 10 support team first with a junior tech and then with a senior tech and we isolated the problem to an issue with OneDrive where thumbnails do not seem to synch properly.

Example...

1. If I copy all the pictures from one of my OneDrive folders to a folder on my desktop all the thumbnails appear without an issue.
2. If I create a new folder in OneDrive and copy the same pictures to that new folder the thumbnails appear at first... If I close the folder and reopen it, the thumbnails disappear.
3. In working with the senior Windows tech we copied all my picture files from my OneDrive folder to a new folder on my desktop. Again all thumbnails worked correctly. After verifying that we had copied all files we deleted the pictures in OneDrive so the
   folder was empty. We then copied the pictures that were now in a folder on my desktop to OneDrive. Similar to #2 above, at first it appeared as everything worked correctly but when I closed the OneDrive folder and opened it again, the thumbnails disappeared.

 

Problem with location of Pictures library after making pictures available on OneDrive

Thanks Rhina

I did what you suggested but it ended up making OneDrive the Pictures library. This may have something to do with the way i originally moved the Pictures folders to OneDrive. I probably should explain:

Because there already was a (fairly empty) Pictures folder under OneDrive (automatically set up I think when transferring a few Ipad photos to PC via OneDrive) I had moved the top level Pictures folders into D/users/myname/OneDrive rather than moving
the Pictures folder itself. This was probably a bit stupid but I subsequently moved the top level Pictures folders into that pre-existing Pictures folder on OneDrive and that's how we got to where we are today.

To continue after that diversion. Following the restore you suggested, the pictures folder under Libraries was still wrong but it looked a lot better ie it was no longer offering me a choice of locations for Pictures folders and, instead was just showing
me all the top level folders for what it (wrongly) thought was the Pictures folder. But it was still not appearing directly under This PC.

My next step was to go into Properties option for Libraries/Pictures. Here I simply added the correct location D/users/myname/OneDrive/pictures and deleted the location D/users/myname/OneDrive which at that time was the current location.

So, on the Positive side:

• Libraries/Pictures now shows what I would expect ie my top level Pictures folders

But, on the negative side:

• Pictures still does not appear under This PC, unlike Documents, Videos, Music etc
• in the Photos app, if I go to Folders option, it shows the folder as OneDrive, not OneDrive/Pictures even though, if i go into "choose where to look" it is correctly showing OneDrive/Pictures as the location. Obviously i can still get to the photos I need
  but it's an extra unnecessary step
  

That's where i am currently.

 

Photo thumbnail picture

Hi

File Explorer>Pictures>Open Pictures.

If Your Photos come up as just a List and don't show up as Thumbnails, look at the Two Small Icons at the Bottom Right of the Screen and 'Toggle' between them.

The first one gives you a List View and the other one gives you a Thumbnail View.

Or you could Click: View at the Top of the Screen and then you Can not only see your Photos as Thumbnails but you can also choose the Size.