Preview not responding

Thank you again for posting this. You answered a question of mine a few years back and now reading your answer here worked perfectly for me to get Preview back. I still have Mountain Lion even tho the newer websites are telling me I have to upgrade. I finally did Google Chrome and again I am being told to upgrade, which I cannot do at this time. I thought with Preview gone I was going to be forced to give up the computer (other little things keep happening like "hanging" and such.) Thank you for allowing me more time with my 5 year old computer! 🙂

Back up all data.

Quit the application, if it's running.

Triple-click the line below to select it:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Reveal

from the contextual menu. A Finder window should open with a folder selected. If it does, move the selected folder — not just its contents — to the Desktop.

The folder you're moving has a name that begins with "com.apple." It is not the subfolder named "Data" or anything else.

Relaunch the problem application and test. If it works now, delete the folder you moved. Otherwise, quit again, and put the folder back where it was, overwriting the one that may have been created in its place.

Caution: If you delete some or all of the contents of the selected folder, but leave the folder itself in place, the application may not launch. Deleting the folder will cause it to be rebuilt automatically.

Will this work with Safari? I downloaded the ML update 10.8.4 yesterday and immediately Safari and Preview started hanging - "pinwheel of death". I used Activity monitor to kill the pgms, but they both hung up again.

I just did the procedure on Preview, but am wondering if it will work on Safari?

Thanks

Thank you Linc. I've read your suggested solutions before, but never had reason to try one until now. You saved me hours of headaches. Preview stopped responding after I decided to try to open a number of PDFs - probably could have been more patient and selected less files. Either way, you're a life-saver and this solution worked perfectly.

Linc,

I'm a rookie at solving these matters. I've got Library open, and I see the Containers folder, but I haven't been able to perform the "Services-Reveal" step. Can you assist me with which folder I should remove, or how to perform the Service-Reveal step?

Dave

Thanks Linc,

It really works. But I found that for Maverick, the Library folder doesn't contain Container folder. And it has been moved under user name. However, the Library folder under user name is hidden. Since I used to unhided all the folder, so I can see the Library folder.

Therefore, for others who can't locate the Container folder. You should look at:

~Users/"YourUserName"/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview

instead of ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview

Make sure you unhide folders: http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/how-show-hidden-files-in-mac-os-x- finder-3520878/

Best,

Jay

Many thanks Linc Davies, it perfectly worked.

after upgrading to El Capitan on my MacBook Pro, Preview opened but hanged immediately, finally not responding any more.

Just deleting the com.apple.Preview folder under Library/Containers/ did the job.

Thanks you so much!

Your answer had the *complete* info to fix it,

(like where to find this folder!)

thanks!!!

Hi, it seems this solution is working for the most of the troubled.

however it does not work for me.

any help?

p.s. i had to mess around with "files and folders cannot be moved (dragged) on the desktop" link issue.

-i deleted ~/Library/Preferences/. . . DESKTOP.plist' and '. . . FINDER.plist' files

-tried,but did not succeed to delete ".DS_store" file on desktop

-sude chflags -R nouchg to desktop