Double-clicking a document to open it in its editor is quintessentially Mac, yet for the last nearly 7 years it could result in a bizarre dialog and refusal. Does any of this make sense?
Preview
Preview commonly refuses to open PDF documents. This explains why, and how you can work around its bizarre errors and warnings.
Generating icons for display as thumbnails, and previews of documents, depend on speed of delivery and icons as faithful as possible for their size. How QuickLook achieves this in Tahoe.
From the first image thumbnails around 35 years ago, the Mac has delivered better thumbnails and previews of documents, most recently using QuickLook. Here’s how it works, and how it can fail.
Version support built into macOS doesn’t preserve versions as well as it could. Here’s how to use Versatility to ensure you don’t lose versions in iCloud, moving a file, or backing up.
Why can’t some files be seen in thumbnails, or previews, but almost everything else can be seen thanks to QuickLook? And is this connected to Spotlight indexing?
Preview offers PDF/A as an export option, intended for PDFs that are to be relied on long into the future, for archives. Do they comply with one of the PDF/A standards, though?
Two confounding factors to take into account when interpreting timestamps on files: what updates the Last opened time, and access via QuickLook.
Without you saving any changes made to a document, Preview saves versions in the macOS versioning system that could prove a great help. Here’s how to use it.
Annotations are complicated. If you’re not careful, hidden annotations can be left in documents and cause embarrassment. And how to recover a PDF that Preview has mutilated.
The Eclectic Light Company 