How do I preview PDFS in Windows 10?

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QI work part time as an administrator for a local charity. As part of this I have to deal with a lot of documents in PDF format, dipping in and out of different ones to find particular information. It occurred to me that it’d be useful to be able to see a preview of each PDF before I open it, but I don’t seem to be able to make Windows 10 do this. I wonder if it’s possible? When I view photos, for example, the window shows me little preview versions of the images in each folder – so I can quickly see which one I’m looking for. The PDFS all have sizeable headlines and images, so this facility would be really useful. Do you know if it’s possible? Sue Palmer

AYes, this is possible. You didn’t tell us which PDF viewer you’re using, but by far the most popular is Acrobat Reader DC, not least because it’s made by Adobe, the inventer of the PDF file format. So, if you don’t already have this installed, grab the latest version free of charge, from www.snipca.com/30127.

Next, launch Reader then open the Edit menu and choose Preferences (see screenshot 1 ). Now, in the left-hand pane, under Categories, click to select General. Then, in the right-hand pane, tick the box labelled ‘Enable PDF thumbnail previews in Windows Explorer’ (see screenshot 2 ). Click OK.

That’s the feature enabled. To use it, you still need to open an appropriate view in File Explorer. First, press Windows key+e to launch File Explorer, then navigate to the folder containing your PDFS. Now, on the ribbon at the top of the window, select the View tab. Finally, in the Layout category, just click to select ‘Medium icons’, ‘Large icons’ or 'Extra large icons’ (see screenshot 3 ).