Parallels SmartSelect - Setting Document Icons Under OS X

[Kelmon]

OK, here's the issue. I recently installed Parallels 3.0 and have been enjoying the goodness of SmartSelect so that I can, for example, open OS X Word documents in Windows Word 2007 and Windows text files in OS X TextMate. While Windows seems quite happy to use the correct document icon for document types being opened by OS X applications the same doesn't seem to be true for OS X documents being opened by Windows applications. For example, all my Office applications under OS X are now lacking an icon. Does anyone know how I can set document icons across my account for specific document types (e.g. .doc, .xls, etc)? I am familiar with the copy/paste method from the Finder's Get Info panel for a document but I'm not doing that for the hundreds of documents on my Mac.

Suggestions, as always, are appreciated.

 

[Kelmon]

Hmm, I thought this was going to be an easy topic for someone but evidentially not. OK, let's try this a different way:

Anyone know how OS X determines the icon to display for a given file? There's no Registry in OS X (*does happy dance*) so how does the OS link applications with its associated file types?

 

[Kelmon]

We Have A Solution

Hurrah! I've been directed to the solution to my issue by Patrick Lightbody (cheers, Patrick!). I reproduce the solution to the issue below but all credit for this goes to Jia-Yong Ou and can been read here: http://blog.orly.ch/articles/2007/07/08/changing-default-document-icons-in-osx

In order for OS X to display files in the Finder with a non-generic icon when the document type has been linked to a Windows application within a virtual machine using SmartSelect, do the following:

1. Go to the "Windows Applications" folder inside your virtual machine's folder
2. Right click on the application you want to change the document icon
3. Select "Show Package Contents"
4. Open the folder "Contents/Resources"
5. Drop the icon into it
6. Rename it to my_documents.icns
7. Relaunch finder (via Command-Alt-Esc)

If you don't already have a source of icons to use for your applications (I needed ones for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, although I could probably have taken them from my existing Office:mac 2004 installation) then the site suggests downloading the Docunium set from Rimshot Design.

 

[Kelmon]

Parallels Updates Undoes Icons

Having this morning installed the update to Parallels 3.0 (build 4560) I have to report that this update does not resolve this issue and in fact undoes the changes that I made. Until the underlying issue is fixed it looks as though you need to apply your own icons after each update or just avoid linking files stored under OS X with applications running under a Virtual Machine.