"Do you mean the little shrugging guy ???" Exactly. that little guy is really starting to bother me. a model,pose, or material viewed with the DAZ Studio library browser does show the preview, but not in poser 6. this is my last current hurtle in poser before i can begin a reasonable workflow. the whole point of poser for me is to be able to include people in my 3d architectural visualations. if i cannot see a preview in the library then i am just lost in the jungle that is my runtime folder. so many shrugging little guys! the Poser SR2 version "read me" includes a mention of a new menu choice. "build folder menu" has been added to Poser. where is this choice in poser? also, i saw the edit you listed above to the libraryprefs.xml did that. no change. i even found a mention of an old application called "macconverter" that is supposed to help, but it is only for MacOS 9 and i am on version 10.4.5 with no classic OS available... sigh. its supposed to fix "damaged poser files" or some such. but all referenced software versions are years out of date... "macos 9" "poser 4" etc. thanks for the help. :D