Seems like everytime I login I get a message stating that the preview is trying to generate but to check back in ~ ten minutes...  Is it my file that is broken?

We've made some changes to our error reporting.  You might try previewing again and then waiting ~10 min.  This time around "broken" files (not really broken but files that we are unable to convert for the reasons stated above) will now report with an error stating:

"We were unable to create a preview of this file. There was an error generating the Preview."

I am getting an error on previewing a PDF file that is only two pages, and is not copy protected. 

David, if you email the file to support@centraldesktop-inc.com we can test it and see what is causing the problem.  Even some small files may not work if the total rendering time is too long (essentially, the time to generate a print image).  We welcome examples of files that are not working and we will try to report back what is causing the problem and any workarounds. 

I frequently would like to create a web page from a Word document.  I can generally do this by simply pasting the document into a web page in Central Desktop.  However, graphics don't paste.  This is very unfortunate as it takes a lot of extra time and fiddling around to get these into the web page.  It looks like your preview function might provide a solution.  Is there any help you can give me on this?  Do you have a suggestion for an efficient way to make a web page from a Word document (including graphics)?

I'm not sure where this comment goes or how I see the reply so I will post the same question on the help page.

Thanks,

Huck

Huck, This is not a limitation of Central Desktop, it is a limitation of web browsers in general. There is not a standard way to handle copying/pasting of non-text elements.If you simply want to display a page but not have any links work then our preview feature could work very well for you.  It is essentially a printed copy of the document.

Any prognosis on when you will be able to preview .docx, .xlsx and other new MS office formats?  Seems pretty important to me.

We are working on an update to the preview feature.  It will feature much faster initial loading, especially for large documents.  We have also been making changes to try to get the previews processed even faster so they are generally available within 5-10 minutes. 

We hope to also be adding support for more formats and the new MS formats (.docx, etc...) are at the top of what we'd like to expand to support.  In the meantime you can save as Word 2003 format and we can make a preview from that with the additional benefit being that if you are sharing your document it's more likely to be compatible with others. 

Would it be possible to be able to tag our files with their format? 

I would like to upload some assembler sources - they are just plain text, but to even take a quick look at them the others have to download them locally.

I think it would be difficult to list all the possible file extensions that plain text files could use so a tag would work well. 

Guy, That's a really good idea although technically there may be hurdles to overcome.  But we'll definitely look into it and see if there's a way we can make it happen. 

I am attempting to try this system as a free user to determin fast if this will be the platform for major litigation.

My needs are the ability to upload 170,000 Pages of documents in PDF format and sort in different folders absed on subject.

The master folder will need single word search capabilities of the subfolders and docs as if this was sitting on my computer.  

I will also need a single folder to place text versions of these documents.

In addtion, pictures, video, audio files as paert of evidence folders will need to be uploaded for sharing and discussion.

Can someone please call me today at 757-544-1299 and set a time to discuss today.

Kind reagrds

Andy

Andy,

Yes we can accommodate your needs.  I have sent you an email to follow up. 

Can you give any indication of whether support for the other OpenOffice file formats is planned? 

Derek, while our focus is currently on improving the preview conversion percentage (some files still are not previewable) and conversion speed for the above listed file types, we are also looking to add more types over time.  I don't have an estimated time frame presently but it's likely that the other OpenOffice file formats will be supported in the future.

pdf file really takes longer time than 10 min (the preview has never work for me).

      do you have any fix for this
 

We have been experiencing high load and convert times recently (could possibly take an hour or more).  We will be adding more capacity to the preview generation soon.  If you have a specific file that fails to convert please email your specific details to support@centraldesktop-inc.com and we'll be able to look into the matter in more depth for you.

Wouldn't comments be more relevant if shown in decending order so most recent show up near the document? 

Isn't this how blog commenting works?  Most recent are at the bottom.

The man himself speaks!  Cool... 

It appears that rtf files from a Mac cannot be previewed. Any chance this feature can be enabled at some point soon?

Thanks!

Simon, I just made a very simple .rtf file on Mac OS X 10.5 using TextEdit and it worked fine and created a preview.  There may be something specific to your .rtf file.  If you'd like us to try it out please send a copy of the file to support@centraldesktop-inc.com and we'll test it for you and debug further.

OK, Alan, I just emailed a small file for your testing. Thanks.