I cannot see any foot prints when clicking on them in the schematic editor. When I pull up the assign footprint menu I see a long list with all the file names and when I go to preferences it shows the directory to the footprints, but there’s only an empty grid when I try to look at them and nothing when I try 3d view.
The process you described is little confusing, what are you trying to achieve?
Trying to view the footprint from “Assign footprint window” ?
If it’s a custom footprint and the grid is empty when you try to view, probably the footprint was made in older version of KiCad (<5.0) which doesn’t support in KiCad 6.0 or KiCad 7.0
Also, Please mention which software are you used??? because preference setting also available in ALTIUM also.