On Windows, there are times when icon display gets messed up and you see a lot of generic icons or incorrect icons. There are also times when you change the icon for a category of files, but the new icons do not show up correctly.

When this happens, you probably need to clear the icon cache in Explorer. This is achieved by doing the steps below:

• First, enable the display of hidden files in Explorer: Open File Explorer > Folder Options > Views and check the option to show Hidden System Files.
• Next, go to C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local folder
• Here, you should see the hidden file IconCache.db – delete it.

Now, to rebuild the file, there are two options:

• Reboot: this is easy for everyone, though a bit inconvenient
• Restart Explorer:
  • Go to Task Manager (e.g., by pressing Windows Key + Esc)
  • Switch to the details tab and find explorer.exe
  • Right click on explorer.exe and click ‘End Task’
    
  • Then, from the ‘File’ menu in Task Manager, click on ‘Run New Task’
  • In the dialog that comes up, type explorer.exe and press enter – this will launch explorer again.

Once done, these steps will help you purge the icon cache and then rebuild it.

I added this information here to be able to remember how to do it since I want to make changes to the default icons for the Office files. If you have any comments, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to connect or share the post (you can tag me as @onghu on X or on Mastodon as @onghu@ruby.social or @onghu.com on Bluesky to discuss more).