Lately Preview is messed up. It creates documents with multiple pages that have nothing to do with each other

Question

Lately Preview is messed up. It creates documents with multiple pages that have nothing to do with each other

Sometime in the last month or so, when I scan a totally new document on my HP OfficeJet Pro 8720 and save it as a PDF, it shows up on Preview when I open it with a random previous saved document. See the attached screenshot of a preview screen reporting at the very top that the screen is showing 3 documents. I would never want this to happen. Just confusing and ruins my Apple desktop feng shue.

Anyone else having this problem?

Any ideas how to prevent Preview from taking it into it's own hands to mess up like this?

Oh disregard what'sprinxted below. I mustn't have updated my devices to say that I'm fully updated to the current version of the Catalina OS

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 16, 2020 3:02 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

BDAqua

Level 10

245,339 points

Aug 16, 2020 4:53 PM in response to Steven Weinberg1

OK, let's start with this...

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

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Answer 2

Aug 19, 2020 4:41 PM in response to BDAqua

Sorry if it's taking me so long to reply. I've been too busy to do the following 1st step.

I really haven't spend enough time to really wrap my hands around the problem. It doesn't happen all the time with preview, but happens with shocking regularity some of the time and until I understand the problem better I'm not comfortable trying to solve it because even after starting in safe mode, I don't know how to reliably replicate the problem to see if it's there or gone away..
So I haven't really proceeded. Please have patience. Its a problem, but it does not generally interfere with my 24/7 use of my laptop.