Display a thumbnail of Word and PowerPoint files in Windows Explorer

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I like to see a thumbnail of the first page of a Word document or the title slide of a PowerPoint slide deck in Windows Explorer.

With Microsoft Word, you can check the Save Thumbnail checkbox in the Save As dialog box to create the thumbnail:
word_save_thumbnail

In Microsoft PowerPoint, this feature is a bit more hidden. You can find it in the Advanced Properties: Click File > Info, click on the Properties heading on the right-hand side and click Advanced Properties:
ppt_properties
In the dialog box, click on the Summary tab. There you can check Save preview picture:
ppt_advanced_properties_summary
Now save the file and the thumbnail will be visible in Windows Explorer.

Getting rid of annoying context menu options

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Some programs insist on adding items to the context menu. Most of the time, the installation program does not ask first whether I want that – mostly I don’t – and even more annoyingly, most programs also do not offer an easy way to turn off the integration into the right-click menu.

Luckily, there are tools that can help reducing the clutter to something meaningful, like Nirsoft’s excellent ShellMenuView and ShellExView
shellmenuview shexview.

Unforyunately, some companies make it very difficult to get rid of their additions. Adobe is really getting on my nerves, as it adds a variety of items that I don’t find useful, some of which I can’t even get rid of with the above mentioned tools from Nirsoft.

If you also want to keep a clean right-click menu in Windows Explorer, the below information might help:

  • To remove the Combine supported files in Acrobat context menu item:
    regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\Acrobat Elements\ContextMenu.dll"
    or for 64-bit Windows:
    regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\Acrobat Elements\ContextMenu64.dll"
  • To remove Outlook PDF Maker:
    regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\PDFMaker\Mail\Outlook\PDFMOutlook.dll"