My Mac is unable to open files in preview

BDAqua, thanks very much for this suggestion. I had another admin account (not sure why, I never use it), and when I logged into it, Preview works fine. So it's something to do with my "normal" account (which is also an admin account), so the failure is user specific. My thoughts were that I had too many tabs open. But System Monitor shows I still have a lot of memory free, and when I deleted the .plist files (assuming I did it correctly and that this would fix that sort of problem), it still doesn't work. So I know it's something in my own setup, but I'm not sure what it is. What concerns me is that I did do a software update just before the failure, but I thought it was something minor (new fonts, I think), so I'm not sure why that would cause it. Do you have any more ideas on what I should try next?

My MacStudio M1 just started doing this (that is, not opening Preview) after it restarted from the MacOS update that was announced a week or two ago and I finally got around to doing. Now there are a few dozen books that I can't read. I've restarted several times, I'm on the update (that's what caused it), I've deleted two .plist files that someone on Google said would fix it, and it still won't work. When I start Preview, whether through the Launchpad or by double clicking on a PDF file, Activity Monitor shows that it is using a lot of memory, and then that amount increases a little, and then it says "Not Responding", and then the listing for Preview goes away. The Preview menu bar appears for a few moments while this is going on, but then also goes away (the menu bar is unresponsive, just has a beach ball). This is very frustrating to me.

Possibly related is that there are some (not all) PDF files that when they reopen (after the restart) in Safari aren't the right size. Instead of filling my screen, the PDF is just a couple inches across up in the upper right corner. I can change the font size by right clicking, but haven't figured out how to make the document itself any larger, so it's either too small to read, or a nice font size but I can only see a small piece of a few inches of the document.

To find out if it's system wide or user specific, try this...

Open System Preferences>Users & Groups, unlock the lock, click on the little plus icon, make a new admin account, log out & into the new account.

Does it work in the new account?

I suspect one or more of thesefiles need deletion in the original User account...

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.ViewState.plist

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileList.plist

~/Library/Group Containers/com.apple.Preview/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist

~ tilde indicates  your user library folder

Apple hid the Users' Library folders...

Method 1:

1. From the Finder, select the Go menu at top of the screen, and choose Go to Folder.
2. In the window that opens, enter ~/Library, and click Go.

Or…

 Use the Command-Shift-. toggle in Finder to show or to hide hidden files and folders