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How do I enable the Preview Pane in Open File Dialogs to continue working in my application when launched from Visual Studio?
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Scott Settlemier
1
Reputation point
I would like for the Preview Pane in Open File Dialogs created by my application to continue working even when that application is being debugged or just launched using "Start Without Debugging" from Visual Studio.
Other applications like KDiff3, Notepad, etc. suffer the same problem. For example, if you run Visual Studio and select Open Project/Solution and load C:\Windows\Notepad.exe, then launch it using Start Without Debugging and, in that instance of Notepad, click File Open, click the icon to show the Preview Pane and select some kind of file for which a preview handler is registered like an image or text file, the Preview Pane will just show a blank. But some applications like Mathematika or Word, when launched this way, will have Open File Dialogs whose Preview Pane continues to work. What are those applications doing that I need to do in my own (C++, MFC-based, built in VS 2015/2019) to allow the Preview Pane to work in Open File Dialogs when my application is launched from Visual Studio?
Developer technologies | Visual Studio | Debugging
Developer technologies | C++
3,974 questions
Developer technologies | Visual Studio | Other
5,452 questions
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Scott Settlemier 1 Reputation point
2022-11-01T13:12:58.29+00:00 I've asked this over at stackoverflow too (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73293659/why-doesnt-preview-pane-in-file-open-dialog-work-when-application-launched-from) but didn't get any answers, so asked here.
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RLWA32 49,551 Reputation points2022-11-01T14:09:39.8+00:00 I could not reproduce your issue.
Using VS2019 and an MFC dialog-based application (x86 and also x64) the Open File Dialog created by the CFileDialog class properly displayed previews for text files when started from within Visual Studio under the debugger and also without debugging.
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Scott Settlemier 1 Reputation point
2022-11-01T15:09:43.253+00:00 Thanks for the quick response. Your findings make me suspect that it's unfortunately particular to the account's privileges, environment, etc. As a developer in a large company, I'm working in a heavily regulated/administered environment, so it's likely something about that environment is responsible, and it may be difficult to reproduce. You would have to first duplicate such an environment such that Notepad launched from VS no longer has a functioning Preview Pane in its Open File Dialog, determine what it is about such an environment causing that, and what those applications (Mathematika, Word, etc.) may be doing to overcome the issue.
I just tried an experiment and launched Visual Studio using administrator privileges and when that instance launches Notepad, its Open File Dialog Preview Pane functions normally. -
Scott Settlemier 1 Reputation point
2022-11-17T19:11:03.277+00:00 Drag & drop of files is affected in the same way. It does not work when launched from VS, but does when launched from explorer.
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