Office Icons are all missing/replaced by generic white icons

Anonymous
2010-08-03T08:01:12+00:00

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 icons in the start menu and desktop task bar have all been replaced by the generic white icons.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

Microsoft 365 and Office | Install, redeem, activate | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2011-09-24T16:39:18+00:00

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!!!

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-03-02T14:21:34+00:00

    I have had this problem for a while now and finally found the solution. I have tried everything I found online until I finally searched for {90150000-0011-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE} . This is the folder you are missing in C:\Windows\Installer. I found a version online, copied it to the right place, and now (almost) everything is back on track.

    I hope that this solution is spread out since it seems common.

    And Microsoft, putting the icons in an install folder? Really?

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-01-11T13:33:22+00:00

    I FOUND THE ANSWER!

    This bug really annoyed me for a while. The solution is as follows:

    Right click on the tile (or search the offending application on start menu and then right click);

    Click in "More"

    Click in "Show file location" (or similar, my Windows is in a diferente language)

    Long story short, you'll be redirected to the shortcuts presente in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. Those are the shortcuts displayed not only when you pin a program to Start screen/menu, but when simply displaying on the taskbar as well. For some reason those shortcuts sometimes "lose" their icons, and that's the cause of this strange behaviour. Simply correct the icons on the offending application and it should do the trick.

    Best regards!

    Ruivo

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-01-05T11:37:00+00:00

    First of all delete all the temp files from your computer by cleaning the temp, %temp% and prefetch folders. Then open appwiz.cpl from RUN dialog and right click on the microsoft office version and click REPAIR. Perform an online repair and then icons should be back to normal.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-01-05T03:58:15+00:00

    I also had this problem (using Win10 and Office2016) and none of the above solutions fixed it for me, but I have found a very simple solution:

    1. Unpin all of the Office applications for which this is an issue from the task bar.
    2. In Windows Explorer navigate to the Office folder (for me this is Program Files (x86) > Microsoft Office > Office16)
    3. For each of the application .exe files you need:
    • 3.1 Right click on the .exe file
    • 3.2 Select Send To > Desktop (create shortcut)
    1. When all of the applications shortcuts are on your desktop, rename them if you want (by default they will all be in the form "APPLICATION.EXE - Shortcut"), for example, I renamed "WINWORD.EXE - Shortcut" as "Word".
    2. Drag each shortcut to the task bar and drop it on
    3. The task bar item thumbnail should then keep the correct icon
    4. You can then delete the shortcuts from the desktop without losing the task bar thumbnails.

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