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Windows: Changing Icons for Office Files

I use small icons in Windows and the new Office icons are just not very good in a small size. In this post, we look at how to change the icons for the main Office document files (XLSX, DOCX, etc.) so that they are more visible at smaller icon sizes.

Background

The way to update the icons is to update the registry entries for the Default Icon entry for the specific document types. There are a number of ways to get alternative icons (you can search online, download from a specific repository, etc.) but you need to make sure that these are either embedded in a DLL or EXE file or need to be converted into .ICO files.

My previous post show how to inspect the icons that are embedded in a DLL or EXE file and how to count the icon number if there are multiple icons embedded in it. You can download ICO files from online searches, but if you find a PNG file that you want to use, you can use a website such as https://convertico.com/ to convert the file to an ICO file.

Once you have identified the icons you want to use, you are ready to get started.

For this post, I will use alternative icons that are already embedded in the Office icon collections for the different applications. I still think the older icons look better at smaller icon sizes but for now, these are better than the new ones.

Update the registry

You need to update the registry to make these changes. If you are not familiar with changing the registry, I recommend getting helpf from someone who is, because the registry is fragile and incorrect changes can make easily break things!

If you are ready, here is the list of entries to update. You will see that all my paths were updated to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\__icon_file.dll__,__icon_number__ since the Office icons are at this location now. The way to read the text below is:

  • First, we have the registry folder, e.g., [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Document.12\DefaultIcon]
  • Next, you have to update the only entry in that folder and point it to your new icon
  • I show what was originally there after that and finally, what it was changed to
  • Since I stayed within the Office icon DLLs, only the icon number changed. If you have a completely different path, you would need to change the full path to point to the new icon.
*For Microsoft Word*
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Document.12\DefaultIcon]
Original:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\wordicon.exe,13
New:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\wordicon.exe,4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Document.8\DefaultIcon]
Original:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\wordicon.exe,1
New:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\wordicon.exe,4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.DocumentMacroEnabled.12\DefaultIcon]
Note: I did not change it yet.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Template.8\DefaultIcon]
Note: I did not change it yet.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Template.12\DefaultIcon]
Note: I did not change it yet.

*For Microsoft PowerPoint*
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerPoint.Show.12\DefaultIcon]
Original:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\pptico.exe,10
New:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\pptico.exe,8

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerPoint.Show.8\DefaultIcon]
Original:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\pptico.exe,17
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\pptico.exe,8

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerPoint.SlideShow.8\DefaultIcon]
Note: I did not change it yet.

* For Microsoft Excel*
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\DefaultIcon]
Original:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\xlicons.exe,1
New:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\xlicons.exe,5

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\DefaultIcon]
Original:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\xlicons.exe,28
New:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\xlicons.exe,5

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.CSV\DefaultIcon]
Original:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\xlicons.exe,28
New:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\Installer\{90160000-000F-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\xlicons.exe,3

By reading the name of the field you change, you will have some idea of what you’re changing – there are different registry folders for things like Templates, Macro-enabled documents, etc. and you can change the icons for each of these if you really want.

Refresh the icons

It may be enough to just restart explorer.exe after this is done. If that does not work, you might need to remove the Icon Cache as discussed in my other post on this site.

What changed?

The screenshots below show how the icons looked before and after the change on a dark and light background. The old display is on the left and the new ones are on the right. I still think that the “P” or “W” in the icons is a bit small, but it is easier to identify.

What’s next?

First, we changed the default icon for only a few file types – there are many more. See the screenshot below to get an idea of the ones for Excel alone. If you’re dedicated enough, you could work through all of these. I only changed a few for the main file types I use.

Second, I think some of the older icons were even nicer – see this one below, for example from https://res-1.cdn.office.net/files/fabric/assets/item-types/48/docx.png for Word documents:

There are a few places that you can look for these icons:

  • This GitHub repository has a huge collection
  • There is some information on the FluentUI site
  • Also, there are third-party icon sites like Flaticon that have other options for you to consider.

Please definitely check what license is used and how that applies to you before you use these repositories. I could not find a simple nice ZIP file with older product icons that I am allowed to use.

If you have some 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).