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Preview won't quit - saving changes infinitely and always opens a million windows

D

Doju

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
1,510
1
So one time, I accidentally opened a full folder of a ton of images, and it opened them all in Preview. If I select Quit, it asks me for every single image if I want to save it or not. This takes ages, and if I force quit the app it'll just ask again when I open it, so I went through all of them and said don't save.

But, one Preview window with a bunch more pictures all at once in it still remains open with a dialog window saying "Saving" (akin to when you empty the trash) with a progress bar that never progresses. I've left it over night.

How on earth do I just like "reset" Preview so I can use it again? I use that app regularly. :(
 
simsaladimbamba said:
You could try deleting the com.apple.preview.plist file ins Macintosh HD / Users / YOU / Library / Preferences /.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately that didn't work. I removed basically everything to do with Preview's preferences after that (if it had com in the filename).
 
Doju said:
Yes. Multiple times at that.
Click to expand...

I assumed you had, but it had to be asked...

OK... do you think that the Preview window is connected to a particular file or folder? If so... then I would suggest deleting that file or folder (make a copy of it 1st on an external drive so you can copy it back aftwards). Empty the Trash, restart, see if the problem persists.

On the assumption you may have already tried this... or that there isn't specific file or folder it's trying to open.

Then I have three more suggestions.

Boot from a Install Disc or whatever and repair the disk. There could be some file corruption.

Figure out which folder was the Parent folder to the one that caused the original problem. Copy that Parent folder to an external HDD - verify it - and then Trash the parent folder (don't empty the trash though).

Now, see if Preview still acts up. At this point it shouldn't be able to find whatever it was that was causing it grief and may recover on it's own. If it does, copy the Parent folder from the external HDD and not "recover from Trash". (I believe that if you "recover" files from the Trash all it does it put the directory pointers back the way they were (i.e. the way they were when you had a problem) whereas copying back from the external HDD means physically moving the files and creating brand new directory pointers. The files in the Trash are merely there as a back up in case the round-trip from system to external HDD and back somehow gets borffed up.)

I had 3rd idea, but forgot it while writing the 2nd suggestion... sorry.

Good Luck.
 
Thanks for all the help, everyone.

For the record, nothing seemed to work and I was getting rather frustrated, but one day I figured I'd just open it, try to close them all again and hope for the best. And weirdly enough, it worked. It worked! I wish I could offer more information, but that's simply it. At one point Preview was acting fine and I was like "Wait, what? Preview's working now?!".

I'm glad to have it back.
 
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