h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello, a problem has arisen recently with Preview. Not the button under the posting window, but the Preview.app which came on my ibook.

Whenever I try to open a document with Preview, it stalls and refuses to respond. I managed to open the Preview application directly (i.e. without opening a document), but then when I went into the "file" menu it stopped responding. Then I have to force quit the thing.

Funnily enough, when I log in from another account (there are several accounts on the computer) it works fine.

Can anybody help me?

Maybe I should mention the following issue which may, or may not, be related: when I try to download a file with firefox, Download Manager gives me the follwing options: Open With... / Save to Disk; I have to pick one and click "OK" or "Cancel". Now the "OK" button is usually not highlighted from the start, and I have to wait a few seconds until I can actually click it. (Sometimes it hurries up things to fiddle with the choice of application in the "Open With..." option.) Again, in other accounts the "OK" button is available instantly.

Toy Box, the Firefox issue is a "feature" of Firefox. If there's a chance that what you're downloading could be harmful it delays the appearance of the "OK" button by 3 seconds or so to prevent you from just reflexively clicking "OK" without reading the filename first. It's more obvious when you're downloading plugins, as they add a countdown to the button.

Sorry, I can't help with "preview".

Ah, that's nice then. for Firefox!

You say Preview works on all accounts but one? That's very odd. You didn't by chance make a copy of Preview.app somewhere in your own account (like on the desktop or something), so now you're using a damaged copy while everyone else is using the one in the Applications folder? Maybe?

Try repairing permissions with Disk Utility. Probably won't help, but it won't hurt either.

And did you install any utilities that affects the overall behavior of your Mac - things like "Quicksilver" or "Application Enhancer" (APE), anything that is available all the time in every program? It could be that is what is causing the problem, and if it is installed in your Library folder rather than the main one, it would only affect your account.

I don't know if it works on all accounts except one, I use only two actually (one for work and one for the rest, mostly).

I didn't copy Preview.app, at least not deliberately. I'll try repairing permissions just in case.

I don't know of any utility I could have installed recently which would affect the overall behaviour of the mac - I will check this trail too, though.

Problem solved. I trashed the 'com.apple.Preview.plist' file in: User/Library/Preferences