Check hierarchy first
The fastest first pass is heading structure. Confirm that the major sections exist, appear in the right order, and roughly preserve the depth of the original document. If heading structure is broken, almost every later workflow suffers. Search results become weaker, chunking becomes messier, and human readers lose the outline immediately.
Look for list and table damage
Lists and tables are where conversion issues become operationally expensive. Verify that bullets have not merged into one paragraph and that important tables are still understandable. Even if a complex table is imperfect, the preview should make it obvious whether it remains usable or needs follow-up attention.
Scan for encoding and OCR anomalies
A preview should make it easy to notice replacement characters, broken punctuation, or suspicious symbols that usually indicate encoding trouble or OCR damage. These anomalies matter because they degrade search, weaken readability, and can hide in otherwise successful conversions. Catching them visually is often faster than trying to infer them later from user complaints.
Pay attention to code fences and quotations
Technical documents frequently depend on code, shell commands, config fragments, or quoted policy language. If a code fence is missing or a quote collapses into body text, meaning can change dramatically. Preview is the right place to confirm those blocks survived as distinct units before export.
Approve when the output is operationally clean
Perfection is not the goal. Operational cleanliness is. If the document reads well, the structure is stable, and the defects are minor enough not to affect downstream use, export it. Teams move faster when they define a practical review bar instead of chasing visual parity with the original source file.