SOLVED Word doc icons missing after Windows update

[kewl1]

• New ThinkPad X1 Carbon with Windows 10
• Installed Office 2010 - everything fine
• Installed Office 2019 still all good
• Uninstalled Word and Excel 2010 - no problems
• After some weeks Office 2019 turned into Office 2016 and Word docs became generic plain icons but still opened with Word
• Tried every solution I could find in the internet including tweaking the registry
• Removed Office 2010 using Programs and Features
• Everything was fixed- Office 2019 back and Word icons back - Thank you Steve from this forum.
• Then after just a couple of days I got a Windows 10 update and Word icons on Word docs disappeared again and as well Excel file icons and Office start menu icons disappeared except for Skype and one other (Outlook?)
• An Office online repair got the Start Menu icons and the Excel files ones back but not the Word doc icons
• Downloaded the Office removal tool and totally removed Office 2019
• Reinstalled 2019 and no Word Doc icons as well as no more OneNote program even though one note files on desktop did have OneNote icons
• Downloaded OneNote from Microsoft Store
• Everything seems to be working now but still no Word icons on docs, just plain generic ones. But they do open in Word
• I am relatively new to Windows 10 and it says I cannot undo the updates because they are more than 10 days old which does not even seem to be true.
• Windows Version 10.0.19041 Build 19041
• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7, 16 Gig RAM

 

[Wolfie]

Hi,

have you tried opening Start and finding the app in the list and dragging the icon onto the desktop?.

 

[kewl1]

Hi,

have you tried opening Start and finding the app in the list and dragging the icon onto the desktop?.

That will certainly put a shortcut on the desktop but it didn't make any changes to the clank generic file icons. Thanks very much anyway

 

[Wolfie]

Ah, I misunderstood you a bit!. Have you changed the theme at all and might that have something to do with your icons not displaying correctly?.

 

[kewl1]

Thanks for the tip. That is one thing I never thought of. However, I just tried it and rebooted and I'm afraid it did not help. This could only happen to me LOL

 

[Wolfie]

I recommend you do an upgrade which may help solve the problem?.

How to upgrade Windows 10 to the latest version

PLEASE TAKE NOTE THAT AN UPGRADE IS NOT AN UPDATE PER SE; SEE THE LINK CREATED BY @Regedit32 BELOW FOR MORE DETAILS ON UPDATING AFTER CURRENT CUMULATIVE UPDATE. https://www.windows10forums.com/threads/windows-updates-after-kb4016871-reminder.13030/ See also: the following links about updating...

www.windows10forums.com

I am running the latest version which is 2009 (20H2).

 

[kewl1]

I recommend you do an upgrade which may help solve the problem?.

How to upgrade Windows 10 to the latest version

PLEASE TAKE NOTE THAT AN UPGRADE IS NOT AN UPDATE PER SE; SEE THE LINK CREATED BY @Regedit32 BELOW FOR MORE DETAILS ON UPDATING AFTER CURRENT CUMULATIVE UPDATE. https://www.windows10forums.com/threads/windows-updates-after-kb4016871-reminder.13030/ See also: the following links about updating...

www.windows10forums.com

I am running the latest version which is 2009 (20H2).

View attachment 12622

Hey Wolfie,
Something was bothering me so I came back to your post. Your version of windows had a different number than mine, even though I had just done a windows update. Again, I am new to windows 10. I went back to my computer and fooled around and found that my version was dated September, even though I did an update in October. I guess there are updates and then there are updates. So I updated to the exact one that you have above. I took quite a while compared to the other one I did. Unfortunately, still no Word icons on the files. So I did another online repair of Office 19 but to no avail. I wondered if I could get the icon from another computer and put it in the icon cache. I don't think that is possible is it? What about copying the iconcache from another computer that has Office 2019. Maybe these are crazy idea. I have already deleted the icon cache several times and rebooted to rebuild it but it has not worked.
Thanks,'Tom

 

[kewl1]

I just tried everything again ie deleting the cache etc. But I did find that if I sign in as another person I can open Word, write a test document and save it on the desktop and it will have the Word icon. What does that tell me? I don't know.

 

[kewl1]

Final Update: After weeks of going insane I finally got my icons back on my Word docs using these instructions

1. Create a new empty word document on your desktop and name it WORD12.docx
2. Go to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\VFS\Windows\SHELLNEW" and paste the document there.
3. Run regedit (win key + r, type regedit and press enter), go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\, ctrl + f -> find .docx. key.
4. Left click the .docx key, there should be three string values on the right: (Default); Content Type; Perceived Type. Double click the (Default) string value and change the Data to "Word.Document.12"
5. Right click the .docx key -> create new key, name it "Word.Document.12"
6. Right click the new key Word.Document.12, click new -> key -> name it ShellNew
7. Right click the ShellNew key -> new -> string value. Change the Name of the new string value to "FileName" and the Data to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\VFS\Windows\ShellNew\word12.docx"
8. Go to your desktop, press F5 and the "New Microsoft Word Document" option should be there.