Mac OS Preview app stopped showing thumbnails

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Mac OS Preview app stopped showing thumbnails

I'm running a Macbook Air 13" 1.3 GHz Intel Core i5 with 4GB RAM, OS X 10.9.5.

I used to use Preview to rearrange pages in PDFs and concatenate 2 PDFs into one. Adobe Acrobat Reader won't do this, you need the full Adobe Acrobat which is very expensive, but Preview was a nice workaround. One day about a month ago, the sidebar showing page thumbnails went black and I can't seem to fix it. I have restarted, but I'm not sure what else to try. Anyone else having this issue, or have any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Apr 16, 2015 5:05 PM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,033 points

Apr 17, 2015 9:28 AM in response to zuzuman

Preview/View/Thumbnails - does this bring up the thumbnails?

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Answer 2

zuzuman Author

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Apr 17, 2015 11:24 AM in response to Eric Root

It opens the thumbnail panel, but the panel is completely black. The thumbnails are clickable, but they cannot be seen.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,033 points

Apr 18, 2015 9:31 AM in response to zuzuman

Would you post a screen shot so people can see what you are seeing? Make sure you cover any personal information using Preview. Post the screen shot in a Reply using the camera icon or you can drag the screen shot into a reply. Copy and paste doesn't work.

Screen shots

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Answer 4

zuzuman Author

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Apr 20, 2015 10:28 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for the suggestion. Here's a screenshot of a .tif file in Preview - I obscured the name and body of the document with a radial blur effect. The issue I'm having is the black bar on the left side, which should be displaying thumbnails for the multiple pages of the document.

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Answer 5

Eric Root

Level 10

684,033 points

Apr 21, 2015 9:44 AM in response to zuzuman

You are welcome.

Do a backup.

Quit Preview.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Remove the following. You may not find them all. Restart and test.

Containers/com.apple.Preview

Containers/com.apple.quicklook.ui.helper

Preferences/com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist

Preferences/com.apple.Preview.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileList.plist

Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState

Credit Linc Davis for this solution.

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Answer 6

zuzuman Author

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Apr 23, 2015 1:30 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks. I found all those files/folders, with the exception of the SavedState one which was just an alias with no original file, and I moved them all to the trash. After restarting, the problem is still there. Any other suggestions? Is there a way to uninstall and reinstall the Preview app?

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Answer 7

Eric Root

Level 10

684,033 points

Apr 24, 2015 11:23 AM in response to zuzuman

You are welcome. You would need to reinstall the entire operating system. Below is how to do that if you decide to.

Do a backup, preferable 2 separate ones on 2 drives. Boot to the Recovery Volume (command - R on a restart or hold down the option/alt key during a restart and select Recovery Volume). Run Disk Utility Verify/Repair and Repair Permissions until you get no errors. Then re-install the OS.

OS X Recovery

OS X Recovery (2)

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