preview does not open

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imac, os10.10.2 getting message "preview is not open anymore. after20 years of preview always opening- i never saw this message before
 
C

chas_m

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It would be very helpful to have some basic information about what kind of computer this is, and EXACTLY what the error message ACTUALLY said.
 
C

chas_m

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hold the command key and press tab. Does the list of icons that then appears on screen indicate that preview is still open? (bear with me here)
 
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Once I press command and tab, the icons indeed indicate that preview is open. Then what?
 

Rod


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Welcome to the forum fordsteve. I think chas-m would say quit it from that view. You can do the same by right clicking on the dock icon if it is there. Or Force Quit from the Apple Menu. Then I would suggest repairing permissions in Disk Utility assuming (and I have to say this) that you have a current backup.
Forgive me chas-m if thats not what you were going to say.;D
 
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Same problem, but Preview not in task list.

Once I press command and tab, the icons indeed indicate that preview is open. Then what?

I have the same problem, but Preview does not show up in the CMD-Tab list.

This started after doing "open somefile.pdf" from Terminal.

I can open other apps from the Finder.

I'd logout or reboot, but I'm in the middle of a massive (350 GB) restore. I was spot-checking some files that showed up in the tar log to see if I needed to copy them individually, but now I cannot!

I don't know if this is just coincidental, but I keep seeing "fmfd: Could not get user folder" in the system log. "man fmfd" shows nothing. :-(

Jan
Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 10.29.53 AM.png
 
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FIXED IT!

This is a general-enough fix that I thought I'd post it here.

Open Terminal.app.

Type "ps aux | fgrep Preview.app" and press "Enter".

You will probably see multiple lines, including one that says "fgrep" in it. Ignore that one.

The first column is the process ID. Look for the lowest value. For example, if there are two lines with process IDs of "12289" and "12299," use "12289" in the next step.

Type "kill <processID>" (and Enter), where "<processID>" is the number you chose above. For the example above, you'd type "kill 122289".

You may have to repeat these two steps.

When there are no more "zombie" Preview.app processes, it should be able to be run normally.

Hope this is helpful to someone!
 
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