Why are some icons on files on my TimeMachine drives changing to Word?

Question

Level 2

186 points

Why are some icons on files on my TimeMachine drives changing to Word?

I was looking for instances of a particular file on my TimeMachine drives. These are .mov files. On most of them, the icons are correct, showing a frame from the movie. But on the others, the icon has changed to a Word icon and can't be opened. What's going on?

I just noticed that these files are aliases! Why? And they appear not to reside in any folder!

See screenshots below. The ones with the Word icon have changed overnight when bringing up the same search again! TIA!

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[Edited by Moderator]

iMac 24″

Posted on Oct 31, 2024 10:23 AM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

146,534 points

Nov 2, 2024 6:22 AM in response to betaneptune

There is no point in using the Finder to examine Time Machine backup device contents. It will not correctly show Finder icons, flags, dates, sizes, or anything else meaningful to anyone accustomed to the way Finder has worked for the past few decades.

To examine Time Machine backups use the Time Machine interface and nothing else. Make no attempt to restore, move, or otherwise alter TM backup items using the Finder. Examining it is fine to satisfy morbid curiosity, but don't attempt to make any sense of what it shows.

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Answer 2

betaneptune Author

Level 2

186 points

Nov 9, 2024 8:41 PM in response to betaneptune

I forgot to mention I found two files (one is a saved old version of the other) on my startup disk that had the Word icon and were not Word documents.

This file is a text file with my own text in it, and it lives in the Documents folder. Does anyone have any idea why it has a Word icon? It is not a Word file. Probably made via BBEdit.

TIA!

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Answer 3

betaneptune Author

Level 2

186 points

Nov 2, 2024 1:03 PM in response to John Galt

It's worked fine over the years until now. I don't do anything more to it than space bar to see the file. Using the Time Machine interface to see all versions of a single file is extremely time-consuming. I'm trying to reproduce results I had before of when that file became corrupt. It happened on wildly different dates on my two backup drives. And now I can't find a corrupted version at all on one of them. I did find it on the other drive, and it agreed with my previous results.

There used to be a way to show all versions of a file in the Time Machine interface, but I can't find it either by experimenting or in a webpage document.

And just to get started with Enter Time Machine seems to take an eternity. We're talking minutes here.

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