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I have been using "preview pane" in file explorer forever. However, for some unknown reason, the preview pane for pdf files have become very small, to the point where the pdf file preview pane is too small and unreadable. preview pane for all other files appears to be ok (large enough as before). this is only affecting pdf files.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe reader.
I am looking for suggestions to get back to where the preview pane of pdf files is as large as before
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Open Acrobat Reader. On the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
In the Preferences dialog box, choose General in the Categories list, and then select the Enable PDF thumbnail previews in Windows Explorer check box.
Enable PDF thumbnail previews
Click OK.
Wait for a few seconds while Acrobat is configured to show thumbnail previews in Windows Explorer.
Restart then check again.
Yes. I think we're onto something here. If I match the monitor #2 scale setting to that of monitor #1, then the PDF page preview width problem is fixed. I had to reboot between changes.
So for those following this thread, right-click on the desktop and choose Display Settings. Then select monitor 1, scroll down and make note of the "scale and layout" setting. For me, it was 100%. Monitor 1 is my laptop's built-in display. Monitor 2 is bigger and my workstation external monitor where I do 98% of my work when not in the field. The scale setting for Monitor 2 was 150%. So, I put it at 100%, which did fix the PDF preview problem, however the text and everything on the monitor was way too small for my use. So, I set the scaling for both Monitor 1 and Monitor 2 to 150%. While the stuff on Monitor 1 is now quite a bit too large the original problem is fixed: PDF's in the preview pane appear correctly on either monitor.
So it seems this is a WORKAROUND. The software defect is somewhere between Microsoft Windows or Adobe. The scale factor for Monitor 1 seems to be used regardless of which Monitor that the Windows Explorer window appears on. If the scale factor is the same, the software defect is not apparent. If the scale factors are different, the preview pane of Monitor 2 will render PDF's that are cropped based on the difference in scale factor settings.
I have a same issue and thought it might be helpful to describe a few more symptoms.
The PDF that appears in the preview pane is zoomed in, such that the page being previewed is cropped. Only the upper left of the page is visible. There are no scroll bars, so the only way to see the whole first page is to open the document in Acrobat (or some other viewer). This is, of course, a cumbersome workaround when you need to scroll through a number of files, perhaps renaming them to the text title of the document that you're previewing.
I have multiple monitors. In the preview pane of Windows Explorer on my smaller monitor (my laptop monitor) the preview works fine. On my larger monitor, it's incorrect and has the problem. I can drag a window of Windows Explorer between the monitors to the same result: it resizes the preview to be incorrect (zoomed in) on the larger monitor, but appears correctly on the smaller (laptop) screen. My larger monitor is a standard IIIP brand 4K monitor with no special drivers.
Everything was working fine on both monitors up to about several months ago.
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Hi Stephen. I'm Greg, an installation specialist and 8 year Windows MVP, here to help you.
Right click Start button to open Task Manager, show More Details, then choose Processes tab, scroll down to Windows Processes, then further down to Windows Explorer. Right click to Restart, click OK. Restart PC.
If this doesn't help then try changing temporarily from Adobe Reader to Edge as the default .pdf reader at Settings > Apps > Default Apps. If that fixes it then the issue is with Adobe Reader.
I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and let us know how it goes. I will keep working with you until it's resolved.
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I have had exactly these same behaviors as described by Joe Dupree. It seems to be related to settings associated with multiple screen setups. I found a way to resolve this by examining the display setting for the screen having the issue. If you look at Scale and layout, reset the size of text, apps and other items and reset this to 100% seems to resolve the issue for me, but note that text on the hi-res screen will also be much smaller. On my settings the default (recommended) setting is 150% resulting in larger than helpful zoom of the file preview.
