In the old Mac OS (OS 7.x - 9.x) there was a way to rebuild the desktop but not so in OS X so I am not sure how to fix the problem that I am having. Ever since installing Office 2016 I noticed that it changed the word/excel documents icons to the better as the 2011 icons were lame. The PROBLEM that I am having is that all my excel and word files on the desktop are using the 2016 icons, but all my excel/word files in my documents folder (i.e. resume files, etc) are using the 2011 icons and have not converted to 2016. Rebooting the Mac fixes the problem only temporary as as soon as I open a folder the 2016 icons vanish and go back to 2011. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this, or is this a question for the Microsoft tech geeks on their forums? Thanks..
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Missing icons in Mac folders. Rebuild desktop?
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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I am speaking with a MS guy on the MS site. Hope I can get it resolved as its a pain in the butt looking at the files in the finder.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...-desktop/b01c20ef-e735-4d9b-82b7-3caaa7818db2
You can try to get an answer from microsoft support, but I guess it's a problem of the com.apple.iconservices and microsoft usually doesn't help you much with macOS. IMO, first try to rebuild/trash Iconservices.
I'd recommend to make a backup of your Mac, close all Apps (especially Microsoft Apps) and if you are running macOS Sierra paste this whole command ( https://gist.github.com/fabiofl/5873100#gistcomment-2004417 ) into Terminal:
It will ask for your password as soon as you press enter. Type in your admin password (invisible) and press enter again.
Another thing you could try is Onyx from https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html
Cleaning -> User -> Uncheck everything except -> Icon Services (then click execute)
That should do pretty much the same. Be careful to download the proper version of Onyx for your version of Mac OS.
I'd recommend to make a backup of your Mac, close all Apps (especially Microsoft Apps) and if you are running macOS Sierra paste this whole command ( https://gist.github.com/fabiofl/5873100#gistcomment-2004417 ) into Terminal:
Code:
sudo rm -rfv /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store; sudo find /private/var/folders/ \( -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -or -name com.apple.iconservices \) -exec rm -rfv {} \; ; sleep 3;sudo touch /Applications/* ; killall Dock; killall FinderAnother thing you could try is Onyx from https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html
Cleaning -> User -> Uncheck everything except -> Icon Services (then click execute)
That should do pretty much the same. Be careful to download the proper version of Onyx for your version of Mac OS.
Closed all apps except safari and it did not work.
jwolf6589 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Password:
jwolf6589 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
jwolf6589 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
MacBook-2:~ jwolf6589$
[doublepost=1504487914][/doublepost]
Actually tried it again and it messed with the icons on the desktop and now everything is in the 2011 icons!!!!
that everything is equal sounds good, that it is the 2011 layout doesn't.
Just for better understanding. You didn't get any error, like "is not in the sudoers file" and you typed the command including the sudo? Then you did a reboot or at least logged out and in again?
If you create a new word and save it as the most recent .docx format you'll get the old icon, no matter where you save it?
I copy and pasted exactly what you gave me. I rebooted the Mac and am now opening word (takes some time on a spinning HD) and will save a document to the desktop. My bet is that it will generate the old icons. I do not know why OS X is so sluggish launching big apps for the first time on a spinning HD. Windows is much faster on a spinning HD.
Okay got the files saved to the desktop and a folder in the docs folder and its using the new icons. So your command may have fixed the problem, but what do I do about all the old files?
It might be possible that the old files are simply written as an older format, thus the older icon is the right one for those.
If you had a file with an old icon that you can modify, then safe it, will the icon change?
[doublepost=1504492969][/doublepost]Alright, let's try the following to give the old docs the new icon...
- choose a Word file with an old icon
- press (Command + i) > an Info window appears.
- locate 'Open with:', if the triangle there on the left doesn't point downwards, klick it to make the drop-down menu visible for choosing an application
- select the new version of the Word application from the drop-down list
- then press the 'change all ...' button below the drop-down menu and close the Info window.
If the icons are changing like you desire, repeat the steps with an Excel and/or PowerPoint file.
If you had a file with an old icon that you can modify, then safe it, will the icon change?
[doublepost=1504492969][/doublepost]Alright, let's try the following to give the old docs the new icon...
- choose a Word file with an old icon
- press (Command + i) > an Info window appears.
- locate 'Open with:', if the triangle there on the left doesn't point downwards, klick it to make the drop-down menu visible for choosing an application
- select the new version of the Word application from the drop-down list
- then press the 'change all ...' button below the drop-down menu and close the Info window.
If the icons are changing like you desire, repeat the steps with an Excel and/or PowerPoint file.
This does not work because the icons are in the new format in the get info window, its just in the finder that they are in the old format. The new version of Word is selected in the old files.
Another thing we can try, is to reassign the file association. To do this, follow the steps of my last post to open the Info window for a Word file showing an old icon. In the pull-down menu 'Open with...' select 'Other Application...' and choose 'TextEdit' from the Applications folder. It's important to press the 'Change all...' button after that. Wait a moment until the icons have changed, repeat the procedure, but this time navigate to 'Microsoft Word' application in your Applications (Applications -> Microsoft Office 2016 -> Microsoft Word). Don't forget to press the 'Change all...' afterwards.
If that looks better, reassign Excel documents to Numbers and PowerPoint documents to Keynote. Then reassign the corresponding Microsoft applications.
It's possible, that Microsoft uses different icons for different icon sizes. To test that, you can navigate to the folder containing documents with old icons, then press (Command + j). Toggle the 'Icon size' slider to a larger scale. There you'll also see a setting to deactivate the rendered preview thumbnail for a file (Show icon preview) and just show the icon. Every file format, that your version of Mac OS can't render natively, will automatically pick a filetype icon(set), that you can assign in the Info window, even though you might have selected 'Show icon preview' from the View > Show View Options menu. These icon sets can have completely different appearing icons for an individual icon size presentation for better readability.
With a Word file that has the old icon appearing --- If you double-click on one of those files, does the old Word launch? Or, assuming that you have all .doc and .docx files set for the newer Word 2016, does a double-click open that file in Word 2016, despite the icon appearance?
They all launch in Word 2016.
[doublepost=1504551321][/doublepost]
Okay I am doing this and all .doc and .docx files have been changed to text edit for opening. However the icons have not changed. Double clicking the files opens the text edit application. About to change them back to word 2016. I did so and the icons have not changed. About to try your second suggestion.
The default is 56 x56. I move the slider up and the icons go to the word 2016 icons for only a moment until refreshing back to the word 2011 icons. I deactivated the show icon preview box and the icons have converted to word 2016. We will see how long they stay that way. Okay this kinda works as long as I press command J and uncheck that box. But the annoying thing is that I am having to do this with almost every folder containing word files. For some reason this does not work on the desktop.
I am afraid that if I do that I may mess up office 2016 as I bet Office 2016 is linking templates and files to that folder. I know that was the case with Office 2004. 2011 has links in the 2004 folder and removing 2004 completely had messed up 2011.
That should be a simple thing to check.
Open Word, Preferences, then File Locations. That should show any locations for templates, default document locations, artwork, whatever else you use Office files and allow the software to decide where files are located. The setting screen should show that, and (amazingly enough) provide a way to modify those locations if you need to do that.
Or you can just let a "dead" older version of Word decide for you how file icons are displayed (and perhaps continue to annoy you, eh?
)
Open Word, Preferences, then File Locations. That should show any locations for templates, default document locations, artwork, whatever else you use Office files and allow the software to decide where files are located. The setting screen should show that, and (amazingly enough) provide a way to modify those locations if you need to do that.
Or you can just let a "dead" older version of Word decide for you how file icons are displayed (and perhaps continue to annoy you, eh?
)
Having multiple versions of Office on the system has been known to cause strange issues.
Just to verify, you have already gone through and done this?
Yes I have already done that. I had no problems when I had Office 2004 and 2011 on the same machine when I upgraded to 2011. No problems with the icons.
If you're willing to continue your efforts, there are three more things we can try.
1.) At this point I recommend to boot your Mac into Safe Mode (press Shift during booting), after it has started up, just make a normal reboot. Check if the icon problem is solved by the Safe Mode booting as it is cleaning some caches.
2.) To go further, we can rebuild the Launch Services Database. This would have the side effect, that you'll get prompted every first time you double click on a specific file type and get asked, if you want to open the file with the corresponding application. To rebuild the Launch Services Database, enter this command in Terminal:
You can also do this with the correct version of Onyx (mentioned before) without using the Terminal. (In Onyx go to Maintenance -> Rebuilding -> uncheck everything except 'rebuild LaunchServices' and press Execute)
3.) As @DeltaMac and @ZapNZs were pointing out, you can get weird effects using two versions of Office on the same Mac, drive partition or at least on the same user account. However, if the icons are your only problem and nothing else lead to success, we could trick the old Office 2011 version by copying the new icon to the old version. I only recommend this patch, because Office 2011 will unlikely get further updates that would revert these changes.
To do this:
- navigate to your old Word version in the /Application/Microsoft Office 2011/ folder
- right click at the Word application and select 'Show package contens'
- open 'Contents' -> 'Resources' and find the file WXBN.icns
- right click WXBN.icns and select duplicate
- now open a new Finder window and navigate to Word 2016 and find the file WXBN.icns
- copy WXBN.icns from the 'Resources' folder of Word 2016 to the 'Resources' folder of Word 2011
- to make the change taking effect we need register the Launch Services Database entry for Word by running that command from Terminal:
Substitute /path/to/Word.app with the correct path to Word 2011, preferably by dragging the Application into Terminal.
If that workaround finally will give you the right icon, you could repeat it with various other icons for other Excel, Word or PowerPoint files as the procedure only changed the .docx icon. For Excel (.xlsx) the icon file XLSX.icns resides in Excel's 'Resources' folder, the PowerPoint (.pptx) icon you'll find in its 'Resources' folder named PPTX.icns. If you need to modify other document icons like .doc, .dot, .xls... you can look up the proper names for the icons in the info.plist file inside the 'Contents' folder of each Office application.
1.) At this point I recommend to boot your Mac into Safe Mode (press Shift during booting), after it has started up, just make a normal reboot. Check if the icon problem is solved by the Safe Mode booting as it is cleaning some caches.
2.) To go further, we can rebuild the Launch Services Database. This would have the side effect, that you'll get prompted every first time you double click on a specific file type and get asked, if you want to open the file with the corresponding application. To rebuild the Launch Services Database, enter this command in Terminal:
Code:
sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user3.) As @DeltaMac and @ZapNZs were pointing out, you can get weird effects using two versions of Office on the same Mac, drive partition or at least on the same user account. However, if the icons are your only problem and nothing else lead to success, we could trick the old Office 2011 version by copying the new icon to the old version. I only recommend this patch, because Office 2011 will unlikely get further updates that would revert these changes.
To do this:
- navigate to your old Word version in the /Application/Microsoft Office 2011/ folder
- right click at the Word application and select 'Show package contens'
- open 'Contents' -> 'Resources' and find the file WXBN.icns
- right click WXBN.icns and select duplicate
- now open a new Finder window and navigate to Word 2016 and find the file WXBN.icns
- copy WXBN.icns from the 'Resources' folder of Word 2016 to the 'Resources' folder of Word 2011
- to make the change taking effect we need register the Launch Services Database entry for Word by running that command from Terminal:
Code:
sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -v -f /path/to/Word.appIf that workaround finally will give you the right icon, you could repeat it with various other icons for other Excel, Word or PowerPoint files as the procedure only changed the .docx icon. For Excel (.xlsx) the icon file XLSX.icns resides in Excel's 'Resources' folder, the PowerPoint (.pptx) icon you'll find in its 'Resources' folder named PPTX.icns. If you need to modify other document icons like .doc, .dot, .xls... you can look up the proper names for the icons in the info.plist file inside the 'Contents' folder of each Office application.
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