Some MS Office files don't have thumbnails generated.

[DarrenShare]

Only generates thumbnails for around 50% of MS Office files (some .doc, some .xls). Behaviour is seemingly random. There can be a combination of successes and failures all in the same directory.

When running the command
ooo-thumbnailer file.doc preview.png 128

on failed files, I get the following output:

error: The metadata does not have a thumbnail property
Unrecongised Microsoft Office file type

Ubuntu 10.04
2.6.32-22-generic-pae

ooo-thumbnailer:
  Installed: 0.3.1-1
  Candidate: 0.3.1-1
  Version table:
 *** 0.3.1-1 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/flimm/ooo-thumbnailer/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.2-5 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/universe Packages

[David D Lowe (flimm)]

Please send me the output of this command with the file that doesn't have a thumbnail:

file file.doc --mime-type --brief

[DarrenShare (darren-moorstreet)]

I've tested a few (both .xls and .doc) and they all give this:

application/vnd.ms-office

[David D Lowe (flimm)]

Previously, ooo-thumbnailer would attempt to convert Microsoft Office files without stored thumbnails to Open Document format, and then grab the thumbnail from there. This process is proving to be very slow and prone to failure, so I am removing this feature from ooo-thumbnailer, and I'm marking this bug as "won't fix".

Unfortunately, both OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice do not store the thumbnail in their saved .doc and .docx files (and the other Office formats).

http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=97370

One solution would be to take a similar route to the GIMP with .xcf files: LibreOffice could save a thumbnail in the user's .thumbnails directory upon open an Office file. I am planning on contacting OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice about this.

[TomasHnyk (sup)]

Well, that will not work with files that you did not create (i.e. some else sent them to you). I do not understand why it is not possible to save the thumbnail in the files itself.
The bug https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=67371 seem to imply, that they decided to just ged rid of the feature instead of repairing it.