How to Create a Thumbnail for a File in Windows

Recently I had to create thumbnails for various file types and it took me some time to search the web for a solution that works and doesn’t require the discontinued Windows API Code Pack.

Daniel Peñalba‘s answer to a question titled “Extract thumbnail for any file in Windows” on StackOverflow works beautifully (tested on Windows 7 and 8.1): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21751747/extract-thumbnail-for-any-file-in-windows .

I didn’t find it immediately because of the use of the word “Extract” instead of “Create”, so maybe I can give it some more Google juice with this blog post.