Unexpected preview occurs when you upload certain file types in Drive

Problem

You uploaded a file into Google Drive but the preview looks different.

Environment

  • Google Drive

Solution

Important: The Google Drive preview is a scaled-down version of the complete file and may, when opened, appear slightly different.

Any file type can be stored in Drive. These are the most common file types you can preview in Google Drive:

General files

  • Archive files (.ZIP, .RAR, tar, gzip)
  • Audio formats (MP3, MPEG, WAV, .ogg, .opus)
  • Image files (.JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, .BMP, .TIFF, .SVG)
  • Markup/Code (.CSS, .HTML, .PHP, .C, .CPP, .H, .HPP, .JS, .java, .py)
  • Text files (.TXT)
  • Video files (WebM, .MPEG4, .3GPP, .MOV, .AVI, .MPEGPS, .WMV, .FLV, .ogg)

Adobe files

  • Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
  • Illustrator (.AI)
  • Photoshop (.PSD)
  • Portable Document Format (.PDF)
  • PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
  • Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
  • Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF) - best with RGB .TIFF images
  • TrueType (.TTF)

Microsoft files

  • Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
  • PowerPoint (.PPT and .PPTX)
  • Word (.DOC and .DOCX)
  • XML Paper Specification (.XPS)
  • Password-protected Microsoft Office files

Apple files

  • Editor files (.key, .numbers)