Office documents appear with an orange/yellow box in front of them. They won't open

Anonymous
2021-12-15T15:12:22+00:00

I recently upgraded to Windows 11 pro. I reviewing my locally stored documents, several of them have an altered ICON with what looks like a file storage box to the left of the standard application ICON. None of these files will open by double-clicking. I chatted with MS support this morning and the agent couldn't figure it out either. Fortunately, most of these documents are also on OneDrive, but I have >100 with this issue and it will take time to find and restore a working copy.

Has anyone seen this?

Thanks,

Tom

[Moved from Word / For business / Windows]

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-03-02T22:50:22+00:00

    It's a shell icon - (there is a big one in the file too).

    Image

    Wouldn't using the change icon this way REPLACE the whole icon with this small box from Shell Icon file?

    Do you know of some way to "overlay" this small icon on an existing one?

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-03-02T22:56:29+00:00

    Diane:

    I don't think you can create an overlay for it. It's got to be in the properties somehow. I think someone in Microsoft coding should see this and respond accordingly.

    BTW - I did the OneDrive rename and resync - same results. . . .

    Tom

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-03-02T23:11:22+00:00

    That is what I thought.

    .

    So it would not be something simple or automatic for Windows to overlay this small box icon over file default icon. The file type icon would have to be changed as a unit, ie the file default icon is changed because the file type has been redirected to DropBox (or OneDrive)

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  4. Diane Poremsky MVP 17,531 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-03-03T02:31:59+00:00

    Are you syncing full files or online only (Files on Demand in OneDrive-speak)?

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  5. Diane Poremsky MVP 17,531 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-03-03T03:06:26+00:00

    We can't set an overlay - but it can be done using code. Shortcut arrows, or the shield (for requires UAC elevation), for example. Compressed and encrypted attributes also have icons.

    In addition to the few that Microsoft uses, 3rd parties can set overlays in the registry - but only the first 15 on the list are used. Dropbox is in positions 24 to 30 on my list - OneDrive has the first 7 spots.

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

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