Files do not preview in finder

[TheDude]

Hi all,

Running 3.1 on OS X 10.6.

When using cover flow in finder any OO.o files preview with the application icon but don't display the contents of the file. It did this on 10.5 as well. Is this a known problem?

Cheers

[TheDude]

Hi Community!

Just a quick update on my problem.

Last night, I installed the upgrade to 3.1.1 and now in the finder cover flow view, I can see a preview of my odt files, but not my ods files. I don't have many ods files, so I might just leave this alone. If I get time, I'll un-install OO.org and reinstall to see if that makes any difference.

Thanks

[drjabberwocky]

Dude

Did you have any success with the uninstall reinstall?

I am having the same problem - the preview function in the finder shows odt file contents but not ods file contents.

I would be interested in any solutions you hear about.

If there are none, should this be submitted as an upgrade idea?

Thanks!

[MrProgrammer]

As I've been using Mac OS/X for less than a year, I wouldn't want to represent myself as a Mac expert, but here's the way I understand the situation. Being able to "preview" files in Finder or with Quick Look is more about functionality in Finder than it is about functionality in OOo. It appears to me that OS/X 10.6 Finder understands how to locate preview content in DOC files, XLS files, PPT files, and ODT files, but not ODS or ODP files. I haven't looked much into the Apple Developer resources, but it sort of appears that Apple isn't exactly encouraging Finder "plug-ins" which would allow other applications like OOo to provide preview information for Finder.

There is a partial solution, however. If you have ODS files that you use often and would like to see a preview, open the spreadsheet, select some cells of interest, and Edit, Copy. Then go to Finder, select the file, ⌘I (Get Info), click on the small icon at the upper left corner of the window (not the image in the Preview section) and Edit, Paste. This will put a picture of these cells in the icon and also in the preview. Quick Look will show this view. This is a static picture. It is not updated if you change the cells. But for some situations, this may be good enough. For ODP, take a picture of a desired part of the presentation, say using Applications, Utilities, Grab or by starting a slide show and capturing the screen image with ⌃⇧⌘3 (assuming that keyboard sequence is activated in System Preferences, Keyboard, Screen Shots).

[kabing]

FWIW, quicklook works on ods files for me. But, I have NeoOffice installed, not OpenOffice.org, and I know that the NeoOffice developer added Quick Look support some time back. So it's possible that OpenOffice.org hasn't added complete Quick Look support. Or maybe something else is amiss.

[lgusaas]

So it's possible that OpenOffice.org hasn't added complete Quick Look support.

Quick Look doesn't work for me with .ods files either. I also tried the latest developement snapshot OOo-dev 3.3.0 OOO330m1. Still doesn't display .ods files in Quick Look.

[guthrie]

Been using both for a while basically Neo Office will write quicklook friendly files while Open Office won't so definitely down to the Oo team to add support.

You can even open your ODS/ODT docs in Neo Office and if you resave them from in Neo Office it will add QL previews. Seems odd that this is left out of Open Office seeing as quicklook has become such a basic working tool of 10.5/6.