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
    2022-03-02T22:56:29+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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  2. 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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  3. Anonymous
    2022-03-02T20:46:02+00:00

    Diane:

    I am on Windows 11. The 'funny' file issue was a direct result of the migration to Win 11 from 10. I counted just over 200 files that have the yellowish/brown box in front of them. It's there for MS Word as well as Excel.

    I did try the OneDrive resync idea back in late January (no luck). I also opened a case with Microsoft Support - no luck there either. They couldn't identify the ICON above (at least the agent and a supervisor consulted).

    I plan to rename the OneDrive folder and see if it will resync my files. I'll let you know the outcome.

    Thanks,

    Tom

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  4. Diane Poremsky MVP 17,531 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-03-02T06:00:27+00:00

    The other person in the other thread mentioned OneDrive... all I know is I have 3 computers (all windows 11) and have them on the smart sync files in dropbox on all 3. And only in dropbox, not in my other cloud apps or other files.

    Now that I think about it, I may have had them since upgrading to windows 11... .i'll add my dropbox account to a vm with windows 10 and see what icons I get.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-03-02T05:29:20+00:00

    Thanks for the clarification.

    .

    I was just looking for clarification.

    .

    I misread the earlier reply to suggest that these "box" icons were part of OneDrive.

    .

    Thanks.

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