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Can't create thumbnails of photos cause files seems not saved locally

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Luciano Zanin
  • Edited

Hello
In my Box account I have a lot of pictures and mostly I prefer to use the thumbnails view on my file explorer. But even if Box lists all my files and I can open them no thumbnail is created when I enable this view. The issue occurs with Windows file explorer as well as thirty part apps, like FreeCommander or Directory Opus and for all folders.

All files are marked with a small cloud icon and this makes me think if they are not really downloaded but only "cached".

I have another computer with the same Box account configured and on this 2nd machine everything works normally: files are not marked with the cloud icon and thumbnails are regularly created.

Any idea about what's wrong?

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  • Luciano Zanin

    OK I found the reason by myself and report it here for other users convenience. Files and folders in effect were not set for offline use, so changing this setting fixed the problem. I am a long time user of Box Sync, that differently than Box Drive, always saves files locally. This is a big difference to keep in mind.

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  • France

    Hi Luciano, 

    Welcome to the Box Community!

    Your observation is actually correct. It is expected behavior that thumbnails do not show previews in Box Drive as the files are not actually downloaded to your computer yet. Thumbnails of Box files are not visible unless the file is cached, or marked for offline. This is currently a known limitation for Box Drive:

    • For Windows users: Thumbnails of Box files are not visible in Windows Explorer unless the file is cached or marked for offline.
    • For Mac users: File thumbnails do not appear for files that have not been previously opened through Box Drive. Additionally, Finder's Quick Look does not work for files that have not been previously opened through Box Drive.

    You could mark a folder for Offline access and it will download that whole folder to the cache, which would make thumbnails work in that folder. Check out this article on how to Mark a folder for offline access: https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043697574-Making-Content-Available-Offline 

    Thanks for your participation in the Community!

    Best,

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