Visitor

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2 Messages

Sunday, October 26th, 2025 1:00 AM

Occasional Attachment Preview Error in Comcast Webmail (PDF and JPG)

I'm experiencing an intermittent issue with Comcast webmail when previewing attachments.

Most often, this occurs with PDF files: when I click to preview a PDF attachment (either before sending or after receiving), I sometimes get the error message:

"An error occurred while loading the document so it cannot be displayed. Please download the file using the button below."

The files are typically small (e.g., 120KB), open fine on my PC, and are standard PDFs. I tested this in both Edge and Firefox, and the error occurs in both browsers.

I also occasionally see this error with .jpg image attachments, though less frequently. For example, a 76KB JPEG previewed fine, but a larger 1.7MB photo showed inconsistent orientation before and after sending (landscape before, portrait after).

I could not reproduce the error today with a JPEG, but I’ve seen it enough times to know it’s not isolated.

Is this a known issue with Comcast’s preview engine? Are there recommended file formats, size limits, or encoding practices to avoid this error?

Thanks in advance for any guidance or insight.

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Accepted Solution

Expert

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33.1K Messages

2 months ago

@grb127 

I'm experiencing an intermittent issue with Comcast webmail when previewing attachments.

Most often, this occurs with PDF files: when I click to preview a PDF attachment (either before sending or after receiving), I sometimes get the error message:

"An error occurred while loading the document so it cannot be displayed. Please download the file using the button below."

The files are typically small (e.g., 120KB), open fine on my PC, and are standard PDFs. I tested this in both Edge and Firefox, and the error occurs in both browsers.

I also occasionally see this error with .jpg image attachments, though less frequently. For example, a 76KB JPEG previewed fine, but a larger 1.7MB photo showed inconsistent orientation before and after sending (landscape before, portrait after).

I could not reproduce the error today with a JPEG, but I’ve seen it enough times to know it’s not isolated.

Is this a known issue with Comcast’s preview engine? Are there recommended file formats, size limits, or encoding practices to avoid this error?

Thanks in advance for any guidance or insight.

This is a known issue and a ticket has been opened.  No ETA.

(edited)

Visitor

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1 Message

I am having the same problem with pdfs in Comcast email.

Visitor

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2 Messages

According to some expert, "This is a known issue and a ticket has been opened.  No ETA."

Accepted Solution

Official Employee

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337 Messages

2 months ago

Thanks for joining us in our community forums! Sorry that attachment previews have not been working properly! This is a known issue and there is not an estimated date for resolution at this time. Have you noticed any other problems when trying to access your emails?

Regular Visitor

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8 Messages

It's now December 20th 2025 and this problem still has not been resolved. It's been going on for months! How can a high-tech company like Xfinity not be able to resolve this it doesn't make any sense. It's either laziness, incompetence, or you just don't care about your customers.

Visitor

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1 Message

10 days ago

It's 12/10/25, and I am still having those same attachment issues with Comcast emails and have been for months. I was told today by an IT person, working on my desktop, that this was an ongoing issue with Xfinity email attachments. I don't quite understand why it is taking their engineers so long to resolve this issue??

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