Have you ever noticed the PowerPoint icons that show up on your desktop or inside Windows File Explorer? Sometimes the default application icon is shown and sometimes you see a PowerPoint preview thumbnail of a slide from your presentation. You’re about to learn everything you ever needed to know about how these work, how to generate them, and how to get rid of them.
You may or may not know that when you save a presentation it’s saved as a pptx file. When you create a template the extension used is potx. And if you save your presentation as a self-starting slide show then ppsx is used. When you view these three formats in Windows File Explorer, the icon you see reflects that format or file extension:
These icons correspond to the three ‘standard’ formats: presentation, template and slide show. If you add macros to any of these files the formats change to ones ending in ‘m’ and the icons change, illustrating the presence of macros with an exclamation mark (Office 365 / PowerPoint 2016 and 2019):
You might be happy to create and distribute your beloved PowerPoint content using these default icons but when you have a lot of them all in the same place, it’s nice to see a preview of what’s inside the separate files. Providing a visual cue of the file’s content can also help improve accessibility for your users.
Here’s an example of three presentations with the preview thumbnail set in each PowerPoint file:
This makes it easy to see what each file contains! So how do you activate these thumbnails?
Preview thumbnails are created by PowerPoint taking a static capture of your first non-hidden slide. If that slide contains animations, you’ll need to take this into account because the thumbnail will be generated from what you see in the normal view, not the slide show view.
Here’s how you create a thumbnail preview image for your PowerPoint file on Windows (macOS follows):
1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint
2. Click File followed by Info to open what Microsoft call the backstage
3. Over on the right-hand side, click the Properties heading then click Advanced Properties in the drop-down menu
4. Click the Summary tab in the window that opens
5. At the bottom of the window, tick the Save preview picture check box:
6. Click OK and save your presentation.
Back in Windows File Explorer, or your desktop if that’s where your presentation is, press F5 to refresh the view and your preview thumbnail will magically appear. If you don’t see it, you may need to clear your Windows thumbnail cache. Here’s how to do that:
Each time you change the content in your first non-hidden slide and resave your presentation, PowerPoint will automatically update the thumbnail image. To see any changes, make sure you press F5 back in Explorer or your desktop.
If you don’t see the change then you might be facing a weird Microsoft caching bug whereby the previous/incorrect thumbnail is being restored. To get around this:
* File | Info | Properties | Advanced Properties | Summary
Should you decide that you don’t want the preview thumbnail to appear in Explorer, turning it off is as easy as turning it on. Just repeat the steps above and in step 5 untick the Save preview picture check box.
Good news, the same option exists on PowerPoint for macOS, only it’s not named the same. Sometimes one just has to shake one’s head in disbelief!
If for some reason the above doesn’t refresh the thumbnail image you can forcibly remove it by either using the 7-Zip for Windows app or, if you can’t install that app, Windows File Explorer using the pptx2zip hack (or BBEdit if you’re on macOS). Both are described in our tech corner section next.
For those of you who want to know what’s going on under the hood of PowerPoint, I’m going to let you in on where the thumbnail file gets created in the Office XML archive. If you don’t know what this is, it’s probably time to grab a cup of your favourite hot drink while we write an article on that! Or you could read this file size reduction article which touches on zip archives.
When the thumbnail image is created by PowerPoint, it’s saved inside the zip archive that makes up the presentation file.
There are several ways to see inside the raw guts that make up a PowerPoint file. You can use the fairly well known method of renaming the file to have a .zip extension or use my preferred method which is to use the free and very powerful 7-Zip application to open the archive without renaming it or having to extract files.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed 7-Zip you can simply right-click on your file and select 7-Zip / Open archive as shown below:
Now you have opened the door to a new and wonderful underworld known as Office Open XML where we can browse and view what makes your PowerPoint presentation tick:
You can navigate the content of your PowerPoint file just as you would with Explorer. To find your preview thumbnail image file you open the docProps folder and there she is, your thumbnail.jpeg image, which can safely delete if you want to:
Double click this file and you can see it in your associated image editing app:
If installing 7-Zip for Windows isn’t an option for you then this will get you to the same result without additional software:
To regenerate the thumbnail, follow the instructions earlier in this article i.e. Open |File | Info | Advanced Properties | Save preview picture.
Because I like to hack PowerPoint both at work and in my spare time (please send help!) I was curious to know if it was possible to programmatically set the Save preview picture option via VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) which is a programming language that comes with all Office apps.
There’s no API (Application Programming Interface) that allows this to be done but maybe there’s an XML setting that can be changed? Looking at the Word XML file structure, there is such a setting in the aptly named settings.xml file inside a Word zip archive. It’s the element below called <w:savePreviewPicture/>
Curiously, the setting in the Word UI (User Interface) is slightly different compared to PowerPoint in that it appears to be system-wide rather than per-document:
But on checking the PowerPoint XML structure, there is no such setting with that name or any other name. By opening two files, one with a preview thumbnail and one without, I was able to establish that PowerPoint has no XML setting for this and is instead simply checking for the existence of a thumbnail image file and setting the Save preview picture check box accordingly. It’s a pity because that would have made a very nice BrightSlide feature!
So, there you have it. Everything you ever needed to know – and a little bit more! – about preview thumbnails in PowerPoint.
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I made the whole procedure , but the thumbnail did not appear !!!
Hi Paolo. Can you see the thumbnail in the archive? What version of PowerPoint are you using? Can you share the title slide with us by emailing a pptx to info@brightcarbon.com?
Thanks for the tutorial. I tried this but it didn’t work for me. I’ve always had the thumbnails displayed until I bought a new computer two months ago. Now I can’t them to display. It only shows the PowerPoint icon. I just spent two hours with Microsoft support and they were unable to help. Do you know how I can get them back?
Hi Jodi. When you bought your new computer did it have Office preinstalled? I’m wondering if this is a side effect of the Windows Store version that has some limitations. What version of PowerPoint do you have and are you able to send us an example pptx file to info@brightcarbon.com?
Thank you Jamie! I was able to follow along and set the thumbnail for my powerpoint presentation. Question … can I set a different slide as the thumbnail instead of the first slide? Say I want the graphics on slide 5 to appear as the thumbnail.
Thanks in advance for your time!
Hi Sissy. Unfortunately PowerPoint uses the first slide by default and it’s not possible to specify another slide as the one used to generate the thumbnail.jpeg file inside the archive of the pptx file.
Oh… are you going to release a Mac version? thanks!
Good Morning
It’s crazy how difficult it can seem and just after the explanation, everything becomes simple …!
Thank you very much, sir!
Best Regards
Hi Jamie,
Thanks for sharing this!
I have a query not 100% related but you might be able to help me. I’ve created a video out of my power point presentation and have inserted it in Sway for a training session… Both the PowerPoint thumbnail and video thumbnail show the first slide of the presentation (which is what I wanted), when I insert it onto Sway it picks a random slide as preview image…. any tips?
Cheers!
Hi Elena. I don’t believe Sway offers that level of control. Is there something in your training environment preventing your from using PowerPoint where there are far greater capabilities when you present your content either in the browser or desktop version? Recently added new features such as Presenter Coach and AI-driven subtitling are revolutionising the presenter experience.
Sometimes it worked for me sometimes it didn’t..
Hi Trevor. If is doesn’t work for you, try the option we added in the “pptx2zip hack” section.
Yes, I would love a MAC version as well. Thank you.
Thanks for the suggestion Karen. On PowerPoint for macOS you can find the same option under File | Properties | Summary | Save preview pictures with this document. And, if that doesn’t work then you can use your favourite Zip application to use the technique recently added in the “pptxtozip hack” section above.
Great article
Hi Jamie, thanks for this tutorial. I was configuring my new laptop and really missed those preview thumbnails. One more question about that. I like to put some shortcuts of powerpoints I’m working on or frequently use on my desktop. On my old laptop these shortcutlink-thumbnails also held the preview image. I’m still not able to get working on my new laptop. You got any suggestions?
Thanks
I tried all your suggestions, including the disk cleanup and turning the save preview off and then on again, being sure to close the file in between. But even after I untick the save preview box and close the file, the next time I open it, it’s ticked. What next?
Re displaying PowerPoint thumbnail in file.
Thanks very much for all the info on this.
it’s very helpful.
Best wishes.
Thanks for this tutorial! What if I want to change all the slide thumbnail previews on the right? I have a pres with a lot of animations so if they preview without the presentation mode all the slides do not make sense. The only workaround I have found is taking a screenshot of the final state and making it the first image to disappear before the animation but that has been confusing for people who may want to edit something. Is there a way to customize any slide preview. Thumbnail?
Oh i forgot to say im working off a Mac.