Change file icon

Hi, Im new here, and I bleed easily so be nice. I quite often place files on my win8 desktop while im working on various stuff and have a problem with icons I cant fix, for example: I have a number of PDF files currently on my desktop and my pdf program is foxit. I DONT WANT TO CHANGE THE PROGRAM ICON, just the icons of the files it makes. I had the same issue on win7 and i know I can change folder view options to "show icons and not thumbnails" but unfortunately that screws up my image icons.

In windows 7, "types" and "nirsoft files type manager" allowed you to change the file type icon from the thumbnail to whatever icon you wanted. These 2 progs plus another ive tried dont work in win 8pro?

Can anybody suggest a solution please?

windozer said:

Hi, Im new here, and I bleed easily so be nice. I quite often place files on my desktop while im working on various stuff and have a problem with icons I cant fix, for example: I have a number of PDF files currently on my desktop and my pdf program is foxit. I DONT WANT TO CHANGE THE PROGRAM ICON, just the icons of the files it makes. I had the same issue on win7 and i know I can change folder view options to "show icons and not thumbnails" but unfortunately that screws up my image icons.

In windows 7, "types" and "nirsoft files type manager" allowed you to change the file type icon from the thumbnail to whatever icon you wanted. These 2 progs plus another ive tried dont work in win 8pro?

Can anybody suggest a solution please?

Click to expand...

A screen shot would help.

medab1 said:

windozer said:

Hi, Im new here, and I bleed easily so be nice. I quite often place files on my desktop while im working on various stuff and have a problem with icons I cant fix, for example: I have a number of PDF files currently on my desktop and my pdf program is foxit. I DONT WANT TO CHANGE THE PROGRAM ICON, just the icons of the files it makes. I had the same issue on win7 and i know I can change folder view options to "show icons and not thumbnails" but unfortunately that screws up my image icons.

In windows 7, "types" and "nirsoft files type manager" allowed you to change the file type icon from the thumbnail to whatever icon you wanted. These 2 progs plus another ive tried dont work in win 8pro?

Can anybody suggest a solution please?

Click to expand...

A screen shot would help.

Click to expand...

Obviously the blue background is the win8 pc. I want the pdf file icon (not program) to be like the win 7 one, and I dont want to change folder options, because it will mess up my image icons.

how about right click the icon & Properties
on the General tab→ click Change
choose the program to open with & OK

Hello Windozer,

If you have not already, then you might see if trying this manually using OPTION TWO in the tutorial below may work for you.

File Extension Icon - Change Default Icon - Windows 7 Forums

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Instead of placing the file on the desktop, place a shortcut to the file instead. Placing files and programs on your desktop makes your system slower to load, especially if thumbnails are selected, and can slow performance generally. All your PDF files can remain safely in the documents folder, or a subfolder, and are easy to find and back up. Shortcuts have a uniiform icon type, instead of appearing as thumbnails of the document.

It works with Foxit reader, Probably will with PhantomPDF too:

Shawn also has a tutorial for Windows 7 to remove the arrow overlay from shortcut icons here:

Shortcut Arrow - Change, Remove, or Restore - Windows 7 Forums

pcRat said:

how about right click the icon & Properties
on the General tab→ click Change
choose the program to open with & OK

Click to expand...

Thanks, but as i said in the original post "I DONT WANT TO CHANGE THE PROGRAM ICON" just the icon for the file extensions the program creates

fafhrd said:

Instead of placing the file on the desktop, place a shortcut to the file instead. Placing files and programs on your desktop makes your system slower to load, especially if thumbnails are selected, and can slow performance generally. All your PDF files can remain safely in the documents folder, or a subfolder, and are easy to find and back up. Shortcuts have a uniiform icon type, instead of appearing as thumbnails of the document.

It works with Foxit reader, Probably will with PhantomPDF too:View attachment 14366

Shawn also has a tutorial for Windows 7 to remove the arrow overlay from shortcut icons here:


Shortcut Arrow - Change, Remove, or Restore - Windows 7 Forums

Click to expand...

Thanks that will indeed work, but I dont want to put shortcuts on my desktop but only the original files. I just want to change the extension icon like I could do in windows 7. Windoze 8 just wants to be totally hard to get along with, maybe time to try linux again?

Brink said:

Hello Windozer,

If you have not already, then you might see if trying this manually using OPTION TWO in the tutorial below may work for you.

File Extension Icon - Change Default Icon - Windows 7 Forums

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Click to expand...

Thanks Shawn, unfortunately my win 8 registry key shown in 4 in the tutorial doesnt list any file extension, only the program associated with it. I think ill have to wait for someone to create a version of "types" or "file types manager" that will work with microsofts new mess.

thanks for trying though

I guess that you downloaded the latest version of Foxit on your Windows 8 installation.
I think that the thumbnail view, instead of the Icon view is the default behaviour for Foxit programs now.
It fits in With Microsoft's style guidelines, moving away from icons - stylised metaphors, or skeuomorphs - to the miniature representation of the object the thumbnail/tile represents.
Try Foxit Corporation Forums for advice on how to get the icon view back - it probably needs a registry edit to work, in the absence of third party software to accomplish what you want.

fafhrd said:

I guess that you downloaded the latest version of Foxit on your Windows 8 installation.
I think that the thumbnail view, instead of the Icon view is the default behaviour for Foxit programs now.
It fits in With Microsoft's style guidelines, moving away from icons - stylised metaphors, or skeuomorphs - to the miniature representation of the object the thumbnail/tile represents.
Try Foxit Corporation Forums for advice on how to get the icon view back - it probably needs a registry edit to work, in the absence of third party software to accomplish what you want.

Click to expand...

Very strange because I have the same foxit version on both win 7 and win8, and as I said I can change the (file extension icon) very easily on win7 but havent yet found anyone to tell me how on win 8. If I change the folder options to show icons instead of thumbnails I get what I want for the pdf (extension) icons, but of course I lose the thumbnails to my image (file extensions) that i would like to keep. Its not the latest foxit im using.

I guess by windows 8 service pack 8796 there will be a way. Thank you for your input anyhow