How to fix Adobe PDF preview in 64 bit Windows

This will fix previews in both Outlook and Windows explorer on Windows 7 64 bit machines.

If you get

This file cannot be previewed because of an error with the following previewer: PDF Preview Handler for Vista

in outlook when trying to preview PDF’s or just get no previews of PDF’s in explorer..

..then try the following.

Caution: Changing the registry should be done with great care…so make a backup of any changes!

1. Start the Registry editor by using Start->Run (or Windows Key + R) and type regedit and click OK
2. Expanding the tree to locate
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193} and select it.
3. Now to make a backup of the previous settings just in case this does not work for you, right-click on the branch in the left pane and select export. Choose a location you can find again later (just in case! Although you should do this for any registry changes too.). You only need to export the selected branch. Windows 7 automatically takes full registry snapshot in case of major problems.
4. Now on the right hand side double-click to edit the AppID value and change it to {534A1E02-D58F-44f0-B58B-36CBED287C7C}.
5. I preview started working immediately even without restarting outlook! However you may need to restart?

Now, I can’t take credit for this brilliant solution. I found it at http://bink.nu/news/fix-adobe-pdf-preview-handler-on-64-bit-windows.aspx and only write it again here to make it easier to find for all! Why adobe don’t fix this I am not sure!