Fix: Couldn't Preview File Error on Google Drive in Chrome

If you are a Google Drive user, you may have run into situations where Google Drive's preview feature has paused working with an error message that couldn't preview file there was a problem loading this page. Without this preview feature, you won't be able to check your images, documents and videos before uploading them to the cloud storage system. To resolve this problem, in this post, we'll discuss how to fix Google Drive no preview available.

1. Check if the file format is compatible

Google Drive viewer is not compatible with all file formats and some third-party software file formats are not supported. Here lists some supported file types you can preview in Google Drive or you can check the supported file formats in Goggle Drive Help:

• • Image: JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, WEBP, and GIF
• • Audio:  MP3, M4A, WAV, MPEG and OGG
• • Text: TXT
• • Video: WMV, AVI, MOV, OGG, FLV, and MPEG
• • Microsoft files: XLS, XLSX, DOC, DOCX, PPT, and PPTX
• • Adobe: PSD, PDF, AI and SVG

To convert incompatible files to Google's native format, you need to right-click on the incompatible file on Google drive and select Open with. Choose another app to open it so that a second copy can be created in a compatible native format.

2. Clear browsing data

Step 1: Click on the vertical ellipsis on the top right corner in Chrome window. Select More tools > Clear browsing data.

Step 2: Change the Time range to All time and mark the checkbox in front of Cached images and files. Then click Clear data and restart Google chrome.

3. Disable extensions

Step 1: Click on the Extension icon next to the address bar and select Manage extentions.

Step 2: Click on the Remove button or turn off the toggle to disable all extensions.

4. Allow all cookies

Step 1: Type and search chrome://settings/cookies in the address bar and and press Enter to open cookies and other site data. Then select Allow all cookies under General settings.

Step 2: Check if Google Drive Sites has been added to Sites that can never use cookies.

5. Sign in account again

Step 1: Click on the profile icon and select Sign out.

Step 2: Restart your browser and sign in your Google account again.

6. Compress or split files

Google Drive has a size limit for uploaded files. If you encountered the message "Couldn't preview file this file is too large to preview google drive", then you need to reduce the size of files. You can also check the maximum file sizes you can store in Google Drive Help. To reduce the file size, you can either split a file or compress it using third-party tools.

7. Preview the file in an incognito window

Step 1: Click on the vertical ellipsis on the top right corner in Chrome window. Select New Incognito window.

Step 2: In incognito mode, open Google Drive and try previewing the files.

8. Open Google Drive in other browsers

In addition to Chrome, these four browsers also supported Google Drive: Safari, Firebox, Edge and Opera. You can open Google Drive in another browser to check preview features.