icon for MS Word docs replaced with Pages icon

Having updated to Sonoma I could no longer use my old 32bit version of MS Office. I started using Pages and when I installed the this on my Mac all the icons for my MS Word files were changed as Pages became the default program. I have now subscribed to Office 365 and the default programme is now MS Word but the Pages icon remains for all .docx files

MacBook Pro (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Mar 18, 2024 5:36 AM

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Posted on Mar 18, 2024 6:47 AM

Pick any Word document icon that bears a Pages icon. Click once on it and then press option+cmd+i. This will open a Get Info panel and farther down on that panel is an Open With section. Switch that from Pages to Microsoft Word. Then, click through the Change All… button and dialogs to set Word as the default opening application for .docx.


In the same folder where you have these Word documents, click on that folder location in the Finder and press cmd+J. Select Show Icon preview. The yellow Pages icon should have been replaced with a white icon with the DOCX stamp on it. You shouldn't see any colorful MS Word icon in recent versions of macOS and Word 16.83.


Tested: macOS Sonoma 14.4, Word 16.83, Pages v13.2

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 18, 2024 6:47 AM in response to Pearly King

Pick any Word document icon that bears a Pages icon. Click once on it and then press option+cmd+i. This will open a Get Info panel and farther down on that panel is an Open With section. Switch that from Pages to Microsoft Word. Then, click through the Change All… button and dialogs to set Word as the default opening application for .docx.


In the same folder where you have these Word documents, click on that folder location in the Finder and press cmd+J. Select Show Icon preview. The yellow Pages icon should have been replaced with a white icon with the DOCX stamp on it. You shouldn't see any colorful MS Word icon in recent versions of macOS and Word 16.83.


Tested: macOS Sonoma 14.4, Word 16.83, Pages v13.2

Jun 22, 2024 2:24 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks. I'm in a similar situation (on a new MacBook Air, I opened a Word document in Pages, before I had downloaded Word from my Office 365 family subscription onto the new computer; this file was in Dropbox, if that makes any difference).


This fix worked with respect to changing the icons that I see in folders, i.e., before I open the file. However, once I open the Word file, I still see the orange Pages icon next to the file name. I've run first aid in disk utility and also restarted the computer, but I'm still getting the tiny orange icons instead of the blue ones.

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icon for MS Word docs replaced with Pages icon

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