Print Preview With Templater and Windows 7
This information applies to those documents that are created by the 'Templater' add-in.
One of the options when 'printing' documents in Open Petra is to create them and then open a preview window rather than sending to a physical printer. Provided the client has 'Office' installed the documents can be previewed directly in the preview pane. However if the document is a CSV or TXT file and the client is using Windows 7 it is likely that the preview is not shown. This is because, although Microsoft supplied a text preview handler in Windows Vista, they disabled it in Windows 7 although the required program code is still there. We believe that the reason may have something to do with an incompatibility between the previewer and some versions of Microsoft Outlook.
If a client is using Windows 7 it will be necessary to enable text preview by making two small changes to the registry. This must be undertaken by an Administrator. (Note: in the text that follows be sure to copy the squiggly brackets {} as well as their content).
- 1. Find the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt
- 2. Create a new key beneath it called shellex
- 3. Create a further key beneath shellex named {8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f}
- 4. Select the key you just created and then double click the line in the right pane named (Default)
- 5. In the dialog that pops up enter this in the Value box: {1531d583-8375-4d3f-b5fb-d23bbd169f22}
Now find the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.csv Repeat steps 2-5 above for this key.
When you have done this you can check that text preview is active by running Windows File Explorer. Browse to a CSV or TXT file and near the top right of the window find the 'Preview Pane' button. Toggle it to show the preview pane and confirm that you see the content of your selected file.
If you do not see the content, check very carefully the values you entered in steps 2-5.
If you find that Outlook crashes when previewing e-mails you will have to decide which is more important to you and possibly delete the changes made here.
Apparently Windows 10 does not have this problem and you will not need to alter any registry settings for Windows 10.