greying out of document icons

T

tonym911

Registered
Why do the icons for the documents I create in Word, InDesign etc 'grey out' about a second after they come up on screen or after I open a folder? Same when they're in the Downloads stack. They just show up as 'DOC' icons, sometimes with a rendition of dummy copy on the icon, other times not.
Oddly, it doesn't always happen: some (not many) icons for Word documents I create are 'correct'. There's no obvious rhyme or reason for it that I can discern. This may seem a bit trivial but it's kind of annoying when you're trying to differentiate between file types in a folder.
I have a three-month old MacBook Pro, the software is all provided by my company on a (legitimate shared license. Previous Mac laptops I have had (not running Leopard but still with legit company software) did not have this problem. I showed it to the company IT guy and he had no experience of it, they've only recently started rolling out Leopard to company users and I'm one of the first.
Appreciate any insights on this, many thanks.
 
Is your computer fully up-to-date with Apple Software update? Have you used any utilities that make hidden files visible?
 
Hi Chris, it should be up to date, I only got the MacBook Pro in February. I'll do a check anyway, but what are the utilities that you're referring to? thanks Tony
 
Just done a software update, have actually done a few already but forgot, that's another weird problem actually, Software Update keeps telling me to install Keyboard Firmware Update and MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update - three times so far, even though I've done it the first two times. Think I'll put up a separate thread about that. As regards the greying out icons, nothing is on offer on Software Update.
 
Could you perhaps be seeing Leopard's new feature of changing the Word document icon to a preview of the first few lines of the text inside the document?

Can you take a screenshot of this "icon greying out" and post it here?
 
Hi, it does seem worst on (if not exclusive to) Word documents I must admit, as you can see from the screen grab attached. If that's a clever new feature, any idea how I can revert to the stupid old one –*which is far preferable? I can't see the value in being able to dimly make out how much text there is on a Word doc by looking at a small icon, whereas I really can see the benefit of being able to quickly distinguish between file types by colour (blue for Word, purple for InDesign etc). It's probably to do with my age.
Sorry for delay in uploading, Grab produces TIFFs which the macosx attachment manager deems an invalid file type.
 

Attachments

  • screen grab.jpg
    screen grab.jpg
    399.5 KB · Views: 6
To turn this off use View:Show View Options (cmd-j) in the Finder. Then uncheck Show Icon Preview. You can make this the default behavior if you like. (Be sure you in a folder in Icon View)

Note that if you select an icon with a preview and press the space bar Leopard will show you the contents of the file using Quicklook. This will allow you to see the contents of documents without having to launch the application.

Try it. You will be surprised how handy it is after about 10 minutes.

RonMan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top