Cannot Preview files in Grade

Cannot Preview files in Grade

by Bradford Moore -
Number of replies: 5
We just upgraded to Moodle v3.1.7 and we have everything working as expected except for one item. When students submit an assignment (.doc/.docx/.ppt/.pptx/etc), if the instructor clicks on "grade" instead of "view submissions" they are properly taken to the grading page which should show a preview of the document so that they can be quickly graded. The only file type that actually gives us a preview is .PDF.

I know that it is supposed to render the assignment as a .PDF, so I assume the issue lies therein, but I'm not sure where to start troubleshooting.

I took a file that won't show a preview (.doc), saved it in word as a .pdf, and the preview appears; screenshots below.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 ~Brad


EDITED : I finally got the right google-fu and found the info on unoconv and ghostscript and am double checking those now.



Attachment nopreview.JPG
Attachment preview.JPG
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In reply to Bradford Moore

Re: Cannot Preview files in Grade

by wendy apfel -

Hey Bradford,


Any luck in finding a fix for this?  We're having the same issue in 3.1.2.  Grade will preview pdfs and allow in-line annotation, but not word docs, and will freeze up on toggling user.  I'd be appreciative of any info you might have.


Thank you,

Wendy

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In reply to wendy apfel

Re: Cannot Preview files in Grade

by Bradford Moore -

After hitting upon the right search terms, we needed to install the OpenOffice lib and unoconv.


https://docs.moodle.org/32/en/Universal_Office_Converter_(unoconv)



Hope this helps!

Searching for Unoconv will provide you with lots of info, I just didn't find it in my initial searches.


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In reply to Bradford Moore

Re: Cannot Preview files in Grade

by Joost Elshoff -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

There are a few things your site admin (or server admin) should keep in mind, especially with properly setting up unoconv. There's a lot of discussion about this in the Assignment forum of this community. It can be a bit tricky managing the unoconv processing queue, event listeners and the like. There should be a lot of documentation on this in the Moodle Docshttps://docs.moodle.org/33/en/Universal_Office_Converter_(unoconv)

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In reply to Bradford Moore

Re: Cannot Preview files in Grade

by Chris Kenniburg -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

We had this issue too.  Somehow the document converter plugin was turned off during an upgrade so it wasn't even operating.  We also had updated the server and something went wrong with headless libre office and unoconv.  We had to fix both issues.  

Site Admin > Plugins > Document Converters.  Make sure everything is enabled just in case it was accidently turned off during upgrade.

Also, when testing be sure to make slight changes to the assignment submission each time.  If it fails once and produces a blank PDF it will continue to display the blank pdf until it notices something new and tries to re-process the doc or text to generate a PDF.  

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In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: Cannot Preview files in Grade

by Jan Casino -
Thanks a lot for the information, we had the same problem and it seems to be fixed now after enabling everything again. Guess it was the upgrade that broke it.

Cheers!
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