Missing headers and footers in Word document preview

Overview

When I select a Word document in a view, and open its Preview tab, the headers and footers are not present.

Details

When in a view, the preview used in the desktop client is the native system preview that the OS and Word provide, and it does not include headers and footers because it does not even have pages and page breaks. This is not something M-Files can control.

When in search results, the preview is a PDF generated by M-Files to add search highlights, and it has headers and footers as it also has pages.

Solution

There are two approaches to seeing the headers and footers:

• Set up the M-Files client to always force the PDF preview, see these article for more details on the available registry keys: Office document preview doesn't behave as expected and How to change M-Files preview to use local default previewer.
• Open the document in the MS Word application (e.g., double click it).
  • Make sure that the headers and footers are not collapsed there either, see the feature for hiding the whitespace Word has: