Overview
Previewing documents in M-Files can give you different results depending on where the document is listed when it is selected for previewing.
Preview document from search results
When you click on a document in search results in M-Files, the preview is first converted to PDF to enable, for example, hit highlighting. This conversion is only done to supported file formats, listed on the user guide page Document Preview.
Preview document from a View
In the case of M-Files View, no PDF conversion is done by default, but the preview works the same way as in Windows File Explorer. For example, previewing an Excel file will load any add-on capable of previewing Excel documents. If a document can't be previewed, the Preview tab will display an error message.
If you want to enable or disable the PDF conversion also for Views you can use the following client side registry setting:
| Registry key: | HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Motive\M-Files\<version>\Client\Common\NonVaultSpecifics\PreviewHandlers\<extension with dot, e.g. .docx> |
| Value name: | UseConvertedViewerFile |
| Data type: | REG DWORD |
| Value data: | 0: newer use viewer file conversion 1: always use viewer file conversion default (i.e. missing value): file is converted if applicable and conversion is required e.g. due to hit highlighting |
If you want to target this setting for all filetypes, the key is set without the extension:
| Registry key: | HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Motive\M-Files\<version>\Client\Common\NonVaultSpecifics\PreviewHandlers\ |
Please note that disabling PDF previews also disables hit highlighting from the documents.
