Changing icons

[Travis King]

I would like to change the icons for my office XP. The Microsoft Word,
Excel, Access, Outlook, Publisher, Powerpoint, & Frontpage icons all look
kind of boring with the little square with a W or X and the like. By the
way, I'm not talking about the icons in the toolbar in these programs as I
already know how to do that. Is there anyway I can change those icons or at
least the shortcuts? Where you can change those icons, the option was
unavailable. Are there any workarounds? Thanks for any help.

 

[Gary Smith]

This can probably be done by editing the registry, but it's a fairly
tedious process. Are you sure it's worth the time and effort involved?
Who actually has the time to be bored by icons?

(I say probably because Office products notoriously don't play by Windows
system rules, so what works for other programs may not work for them and
vice versa.)

If you really want to go ahead with this, we'll need to know what Windows
version you're running, and the source of your desired replacement icons.
Icons can come from .dll, .exe, or .ico files.

 

[Travis King]

This can probably be done by editing the registry, but it's a fairly
tedious process. Are you sure it's worth the time and effort involved?
Who actually has the time to be bored by icons?

(I say probably because Office products notoriously don't play by Windows
system rules, so what works for other programs may not work for them and
vice versa.)

If you really want to go ahead with this, we'll need to know what Windows
version you're running, and the source of your desired replacement icons.
Icons can come from .dll, .exe, or .ico files.

Well, there are times that I do run out of things to do believe it or not,
so it might become something worth doing if I have nothing better to do.
Now then, I have XP Home with SP2, Office XP, and I'll be using .ico files
that I have created myself. I will be willing to work in the registry as I
have manually removed Norton Systemworks from the Registry before to
reinstall it and get it to work properly. (Took 2 hours to do too.)
Thanks...

 

[Gary Smith]

Well, there are times that I do run out of things to do believe it or not,
so it might become something worth doing if I have nothing better to do.
Now then, I have XP Home with SP2, Office XP, and I'll be using .ico files
that I have created myself. I will be willing to work in the registry as I
have manually removed Norton Systemworks from the Registry before to
reinstall it and get it to work properly. (Took 2 hours to do too.)

Okay, let's assume that your icons are in a folder named C:\MyIcons. I'm
running Office 2000 on Windows 2000, but the process should be the same
except for a version number here and there.

1. Start Regedit and navigate to the .doc entry under HKEY_CLASSES. The
value named (Default) will be the filetype associated with .doc files. In
my case, the value is "Word.Document.8".

2, Now navigate to the entry for that filetype and click the plus sign to
expand the subkeys. One of those subkeys should be named DefaultIcon.
Select that to display the (Default) value. It will probably contain
something like
D:\WINNT\Installer\{00000409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}\wordicon.exe,1.

3. Double-click on the name (Default) and you'll get an edit box to change
the value data.

4. Key in the fully-qualified filename of the icon you wish to use
instead: C:\MyIcons\NewWordIcon.ico.

5. Click OK.

Repeat the process for any other icons you wish to change, the exit
Regedit. You may have to log off and on again before the change will take
effect. It's a good idea to make backup copies of the keys before
changing them in case something goes wrong or you decide you want to undo
what you've done. To do that, select the keyname in the right-hand pane,
then click Registry | Export and supply a filename and location. That
will create a .reg file that can be imported to undo the changes.

 

[Travis King]

Okay, let's assume that your icons are in a folder named C:\MyIcons. I'm
running Office 2000 on Windows 2000, but the process should be the same
except for a version number here and there.

1. Start Regedit and navigate to the .doc entry under HKEY_CLASSES. The
value named (Default) will be the filetype associated with .doc files. In
my case, the value is "Word.Document.8".

2, Now navigate to the entry for that filetype and click the plus sign to
expand the subkeys. One of those subkeys should be named DefaultIcon.
Select that to display the (Default) value. It will probably contain
something like
D:\WINNT\Installer\{00000409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}\wordicon.exe,1.

3. Double-click on the name (Default) and you'll get an edit box to change
the value data.

4. Key in the fully-qualified filename of the icon you wish to use
instead: C:\MyIcons\NewWordIcon.ico.

5. Click OK.

Repeat the process for any other icons you wish to change, the exit
Regedit. You may have to log off and on again before the change will take
effect. It's a good idea to make backup copies of the keys before
changing them in case something goes wrong or you decide you want to undo
what you've done. To do that, select the keyname in the right-hand pane,
then click Registry | Export and supply a filename and location. That
will create a .reg file that can be imported to undo the changes.

I'll give her a shot. Thanks for spending your time for something you
didn't have to. Appreciate it.

 

[Gary Smith]

I'll give her a shot. Thanks for spending your time for something you
didn't have to. Appreciate it.

You're welcome. I hope it works out for you.

 

[Travis King]

You're welcome. I hope it works out for you.

So far, I have changed the Access document icon and the Excel document icon.
I did the Word document on my main computer, but I forgot how to get to Word
in my secondary computer. (Which both are equipped with XP and Office XP)
I'll have to dig deeper. And by the way, changing the icon was not located
under the area you gave me because it's in a different location with Office
XP, but the information you gave me was enough to figure it out still.
Thanks. Now if I could only figure out how to change the program icons
themselves...

 

[Gary Smith]

So far, I have changed the Access document icon and the Excel document icon.
I did the Word document on my main computer, but I forgot how to get to Word
in my secondary computer. (Which both are equipped with XP and Office XP)
I'll have to dig deeper. And by the way, changing the icon was not located
under the area you gave me because it's in a different location with Office
XP, but the information you gave me was enough to figure it out still.
Thanks. Now if I could only figure out how to change the program icons
themselves...

Changing the program icons involved hackins the .exe files. That's more
work than I ever wanted to put into it. The same applies to the
Office-created shortcuts, but you can create an ordinary shortcut to the
program file and change the icon for that in the usual manner. That won't
affect what shows up on the taskbar when the program is running, though.

 

[Travis King]

Changing the program icons involved hackins the .exe files. That's more
work than I ever wanted to put into it. The same applies to the
Office-created shortcuts, but you can create an ordinary shortcut to the
program file and change the icon for that in the usual manner. That won't
affect what shows up on the taskbar when the program is running, though.

It won't let me change the icons for even the shortcuts - and that is where
some of this began. If it's going to take a ton of work to adjust the
program icons, I'll just keep them the way they are because as you said, it
wouldn't make sense to spend all of my time dealing with this.