Office Icons are all missing/replaced by generic white icons

Anonymous

For some reason all my office products (word, excel, outlook, access etc.) icons in the start menu and desktop task bar have all been replaced by the generic white icons.

I am unable to uninstall or repair this. I believe (from what I've read on the internet) that it is connected to the "C:\windows\installer" folder and the Office installer files.

Can this problem be solved without having to re-install windows ( as that is the only way I think its possible to be albe to reset the office suite).

Cheers,

Jurgens

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

I had the same issue as everyone here and I think I've FINALLY figured out a solution!

Go to c:/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office 14

Right click on each program icon individually and unpin from BOTH your Taskbar and/or Start Menu. (e.g. EXCEL.EXE, MSACCESS.EXE, MSPUB.EXE, OUTLOOK.EXE, POWERPNT.EXE, WINWORD.EXE, etc.)

Then right click and select "Pin to Start Menu" (not to Taskbar).

Do this for each program you want to eventually make it onto your Taskbar.

Now go to Start and then for each program (that should now show in start menu with the actual Microsoft Office icon), right click and select "Pin to Taskbar".

You can then Remove each one from the Start Menu if you wish by right clicking again and selecting "Remove from this List".

Your icons should now be back to their original format.

I've rebooted my system several times so far and the icons have remained.

Hopefully this will work for everyone else as well!

Good Luck!!!

0 comments

123 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-01-22T15:00:27+00:00

WORKED PERFECTLY *****
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-01-06T22:46:14+00:00

Thank you, that seemed to work just fine... Was driving me nuts :-) Tried the removal and rebuild of iconcache.db and that wasn't working so well, but this did... Happy New Year!
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2013-11-05T21:50:46+00:00

I sorted this issue out by copying the office installer folder (9014...)from a PC running Microsoft office 2010 on a 64bit system, as mine had been corrupted- i think by CCcleaner.

The installer folder application icons had become greyed out with generic icons in their place so I replaced them by copying and pasting them all individually to replace the corrupted files.( this has to be done as an administrator)

After a reboot, Office 2010 returned to normal and I pinned the new shortcuts to the Start menu as described in the previous posts, then made new desktop and taskbar shortcuts for the ones i needed.

I had tried the other fixes, ie. restore points, picture manager, Rebuilding the Icon cache etc. but left the document icons generic still, but these didn't work for me. The Office 14 fix worked for the shortcut icons but left the document icons generic still.

There maybe other ways but this worked for me.

If you are running a 32bit system ie no program files(x86) in the C: drive, then copy the file from a PC running the 32 bit version.

Good Luck, I hope this helps.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2013-10-01T17:08:53+00:00

Wwo! --- it worked for me. Thx!

Small things like that annoy me even though the functionality of Outlook and Excel were still there.

Guessing which was which or "hovering" over that non-descript icon was annoying.

Thanks for your solution!!!

It would be helpful if you quoted the actual fix that worked for you so the next reader will know without guessing.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments