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. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2021-12-16T02:23:22+00:00

    It would appear they've been archived or compressed in some way. Do you have some file management software that might be doing this?

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  2. Diane Poremsky MVP 17,531 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-03-03T03:27:07+00:00

    This is the icon in the same position in Windows 10 -

    and that was enough to find something -

    What are those little overlay icons: Windows 7 edition - The Old New Thing (microsoft.com)

    What are those little overlay icons? - The Old New Thing (microsoft.com)

    file attributes - Black-clock icon overlay? - Super User

    And I was right, thank you very much... it indicates offline. LOL

    It looks like they changed the how the apps handle the overlays - and default to the windows offline icon if the app is not one of the first 15.

    BTW - the correct key for the 15 overlays is

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellServiceObjects

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-03-02T18:41:06+00:00

    All:

    Here is a sample of one of the documents showing this ICON. I have roughly 200 of these files that show this ICON image. They appear to be MS Word files, but right-clicking and trying to open them using either "Open" or "Open with" results in nothing.

    You can open a properties window that displays the following, but still nothing happens when attempting anything here.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-03-01T22:56:51+00:00

    Diane: how sure are you about that?

    .

    I did some googling, couldn't find any confirmation. Drop box icons tend to look more like a stylized top view of an open box.

    https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=APq-WBvNJGXmRd5Xr4kjbaq4s3b7TQd11g:1646174890021&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=dropbox+icons&client .

    Some of their sync icons are very similar to OneDrives https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/sync-icons

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-12-16T12:18:56+00:00

    No, the only thing that changed was the move to Windows 11, and only a small number of files (less than 200) were affected. They were a mix of Word, Excel and Powerpoint files, and in a few subfolders.

    Again, I've never seen this icon image before, and neither had the Microsoft support tech I spoke with. Yes, it appears to be a banker's box, but in searching the web I've yet to come across this graphical representation.

    The mystery remains. . . .

    Tom

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