* Problem viewing OLE files with FH6 under Crossover on my Mac

[cbuckthorp]

Have been successfully running FH6 and AS4 in Crossover v14.0.3 on my Macbook Pro and iMac. All seems to work well and I have now ditched Windows XP and Parallels from my Mac's. One particular problem has emerged for me to date.

When clicking to view Media for Selected Record, FH does not appear to recognise any OLE file formats. Just a blank box with the file name appears where the thumbnail image should be and double clicking shows only a blank outlined box in the Media Pane where the file image should be seen. If I double click the file path in the media record to view it FH crashes (backtrace.txt file available).

JPEG, BMP and GIF's view fine as thumbnails and full scaleable image in the media record.

If I replace the OLE file format with the actual file type e.g. eml, doc, pdf, djvu, htm then I get a document icon with the file name appearing in the media record. Double clicking this icon to open the media record now shows this icon where the file image should be and if I then click on the File name appearing above the media panel the file opens. This works for eml, doc ,pdf, djvu and htm files but this is not a preferred workaround, not the least because I have hundreds (probably over a thousand) of media files that would need to have the file type edited in FH.

Can anybody help with any ideas what the problem could be? Might I be missing a windows component in the FH6 bottle or is there a setting in FH6 that needs changing? FH6 is installed in a Windows 7 bottle which lists the following additional applications:-

Ancestral Sources, Crossover HTML engine, Family Historian 6, Family Historian PDF (novaPDF 7.7 printer), Microsoft .NET framework 2.0. Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, Microsoft .NET 4 Extended, Microsoft Rich Edit 2.0, Microsoft Rich Edit 4.1 (Msftedit.dll), Microsoft Visual C++ 2008(9.0) Redistributable, Microsoft Visual C++ 2010(10.0) Redistributable, Microsoft Visual FoxPro OLE DB Provider, Microsoft Visual Script 5.7, msis31, Uniscribe, Windows Script 5.7

Grateful any thoughts/help available.
Thanks
Colin Buckthorp
(Researching Buckthorp(e), Tregaskis, Squires, Cosier)

[Jane]

Personally I have never used the OLE links as they are not very portable, it's possible you could write a plugin to convert the links to normal file links, if it's just a case of changing the type, I already have a plugin which sets the type from the file extension if it's missing, if no one can work out how to fix it in Crossover.

[tatewise]

Colin, are you saying that all those OLE Media worked OK in Parallels with XP?
They worked OK in Multimedia tabs via red triangle Open Editor/Player button?

I can never get any OLE Media to work with FH V5 in a native Windows 7 PC.
They don't work in Multimedia tabs nor appear in Reports.
As Jane says, I avoid them entirely.

[cbuckthorp]

Thanks Jane & Mike. Sounds like the problem resides in Windows 7 and if so your plug in Jane would be a great help. Thank you.

Yes Mike, with FH5 in XP under parallels, the ole files did not appear as an image in the thumbnail but clicking on the thumbnail presented an icon (e.g. pdf) or command line box (for eml) from which the file was launched. Similar to the second scenario outlined in my note but but using ole for the file type rather than requiring the file extension to be specified in the file type. This is why I have a lot of media files categorised as ole.

BTW FH5 under Vista on my Dell laptop performs the same way.

From what you both say it seems that my best course of action will be to abandon ole file types, use image files wherever possible or specify the file types where otherwise preferable. If I can obtain a copy of your plug in Jane that would be much appreciated.

Thank you both for quick and helpful responses.
best regards
Colin Buckthorp