Distorted Thumbnail for .docx file

[BanjoTom]

I have two Word documents in my Imatch database.  They are, as far as I know, identical except that one is the older Word 2003 format (.doc) and the other is the newer Word 2007 (.docx) format.  If I open the files, they look the same in Word, and both are set to show thumbnails.  The thumbnail images do indeed show in IMatch, but the newer format (.docx) file is curiously distorted, as shown in the attached screenshot.

What might be the cause of this?

[Mario]

IMatch generates these thumbnails via a Windows function. Windows uses the shell extension installed by your Office product to extract the thumbnail or embedded preview from your Office documents. Whatever is produced by this process is used by IMatch. IMatch has no control over this process or how the thumbnail is sized or scaled by Office/Windows.

Save the documents again in Office and make sure the option to embed a preview/thumbnail is enabled.
Then Ctrl+Shift+F5 > Force Update the files in IMatch.

If this does not solve the problem, only Microsoft will be able to tell what's wrong in their code.
This thumbnail / preview generation stuff sometimes works in mysterious ways. But it is a black box for applications like IMatch.
It may be, if you send me the document, that Windows produces perfect thumbnails on my system. For whatever reason.
Microsoft should have made that "I need a preview for this file" a required standard 10 years ago.

For the OpenOffice format I wrote the code myself.OpenOffice stores all documents as a ZIP file, with a preview image in a specific sub-folder in that ZIP. This makes it fairly easy for IMatch to open the ZIP file, extract the preview and use it. I was always wondering if the same could be done for Microsoft Office "*x" formats... it is supposed to be like OO and I could work around the Windows thumbnail handling...

If your problem file contains no private data you can send it to me via email so I can have a look.