Pretty self explanatory title.
I've got a Windows 10 machine with the preview pane turned on, because I often have to sort through PDFs. However, large Excel files hog the computer for 3-10 seconds at a time, when usually what I do with them is just copy-pasting them around (no need for previewing them).
Can I only disable excel previews, but still have PDFs previewing regularly?
There is a "Preview Handler" associated with every file extension in the registry, that can be disabled.
The known file extensions are under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT as ".xlsx" for example. If the extension has a Preview Handler, then there is a subkey always called "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xlsx\ShellEx\{8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f}". That subkey has a default value that points to the Preview Handler, if you clear that default value or remove the subkey, the preview for that file extension will be disabled. You could store a copy of that key by going right-click -> Export, so that you can restore the preview handler later if need be.
I gathered this from a Microsoft document here, even though they describe an extra "step" in mapping the preview handler, which i found not to be the case on Windows 7, 10 and Server 2016. Maybe someone can explain/correct this.
Windows Explorer: Click one of the following: Tools > Folder Options > View or Organize >Folder and search options. Clear Show preview handlers in preview pane.
I needed to disable Excel previewer because of some issues it was causing with Excel display scaling. ShellExView and Windows Explorer approaches didn't work for me but the direct registry edit did.
