Desktop thumbnails with OpenOffice update

[Ice4]

I just updated OpenOffice from a very old version that was malfunctioning. After installing the new version, all the icons for ODT documents on my desktop changed to thumbnail images of the documents. With the old version only regular ODT icons were displayed.

I looked for other queries about this, but the only recommendation I found doesn't work for me. There was a suggestion to change the file view to never displaying thumbnails, but that didn't just change the desktop thumbnails, but also the ones in my photo folder, where I actually need to be able to see them.

There must be some way to switch back to the setup I had with the old version of OpenOffice, where ODT files were marked with icons, but photos remained thumbnails.

In the past Windows has occasionally started to display thumbnails for all files on the desktop for no apparent reason, but I was always able to get rid of them by doing a disk cleanup with thumbnails checked. I've tried that twice since installing OpenOffice, but that trick is not working now.

Is there some OpenOffice setting that I missed that switches thumbnails off and on?

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

[Bill]

If your old version didn't show thumbnails, it was a malfunction caused by a bug in that version. There is no setting in AOO to turn off display of thumbnails.

[Ice4]

Oh, that's a drag. So I have to go through Windows to change that, where it's all or nothing? No other document types (except images) display as thumbnails, even other documents that were created by OpenOffice, such as Microsoft DOC.

Honestly, if that's the case, that makes OpenOffice a lot less attractive to me. I hope that some developers are paying attention to this forum, and consider adding an option to switch that off. I find those thumbnails totally distracting. I don't want to have to look at photos of work I've done in other documents, while working on something else.

[RusselB]

I hope that some developers are paying attention to this forum, and consider adding an option to switch that off.

Your best bet is to file a request through the developer's mailing list as, to my understanding, few, if any, developers even look at these forums.

I don't want to have to look at photos of work I've done in other documents, while working on something else.

How about working on your documents in full screen mode? That way the document you are working on (should) display over anything else on your screen (pop-up messages excluded as they are usually coded to show on top of anything else).

[Ice4]

Yeah, I'm doing some workarounds to not get distracted by the thumbnails, but I just don't usually work that way. I tend to have multiple things open some of the time, and other things ready to open, so there's almost always part of the desktop visible in between related tasks. Seeing lots of little icons is not a big deal, but little photos of my work, most of which I don't really want to be thinking about while working on something else, is just really annoying.

I'll check out the developer's list. I overall appreciate OpenOffice, so I think it's worthwhile to give feedback to people who are working on it. Thanks for steering me there.