Duelling Previews in Outlook 2007 and FileSite

Duelling Previews in Outlook 2007 and FileSite

Duelling Previews in Outlook 2007 and FileSite

Both FileSite and Outlook provide preview areas, but these are not interchangeable. Sometimes the Outlook Reading Pane becomes enabled – incorrectly – for a particular FileSite folder. Users often confuse the functionality of these two previews, and think that there is a FileSite problem because the Reading pane cannot display the FileSite item contents. “This item cannot be displayed in the Reading Pane….”

Or, are you having the error ‘Sorry. A viewer for this format is not available’?  In that case, follow the tip here instead.

In this post, I provide a quick 3 clicks fix to get rid of the Reading Pane.

The Symptom

In this real-world example, this user didn’t know why the PDFs were no longer visible in the preview.

“This item cannot be displayed in the Reading Pane. Open the item to read its contents.” – This message from Outlook misleads you to think there’s a problem with iManage Filesite.

The Fix

In short, the Outlook Reading pane must be turned off, and the FileSite Quick View must be turned on.

These problem settings get saved with individual FileSite folders with a person’s account, so this fix has to be done each time the problem’s encountered. Once fixed, it should not recur with that folder for that person.

Click 1: Turn OFF the Outlook Reading pane, by clicking it in the Outlook Advanced toolbar.

Click 2: PIN the FileSite details pane. By pinning this, you ensure that FileSite shows those details automatically, every time you select something in the list view. If not pinned, the details are not shown until you click a tab such as Profile or Quick View.

Click 3: SWITCH to the Quick View tab. In the screen-shot you provided, the Document Profile tab was selected.

After you switch to a different folder and then switch back to the affected folder, you should see these changes still working.  If this fix doesn’t stay ‘in place’ for folders overall, please let me know! That implies there’s some system-level issue causing it to recur, or that the user(s) have a particular way of working that causes the recurrence.

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