shylocxs

Q: Where have my MS icons gone in Yosemite?

I really like Yosemite, but one thing I noticed right away was that my MS document icons all turned white on the desktop. If I open a Finder window they appear in the List view, Column view and Cover Flow (does anyone use that anymore?) but not in the Icon view. Any ideas?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 18, 2014 5:50 AM

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Q: Where have my MS icons gone in Yosemite?

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  • by CraigJ,

    CraigJ CraigJ Feb 17, 2015 8:39 AM in response to Ouatataz
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Feb 17, 2015 8:39 AM in response to Ouatataz

    I had the same experience as Ouatataz:

     

    Manually deleting the cache via the following steps did not work:

    1. Delete the contents (including hidden files) of the following Cache folders:
      1. /Library/Caches
      2. /System/Library/Caches
      3. /Users/{YOUR_USERNAME}/Library/Caches
    2. Reboot

     

    However, deleting all four cache options via TinkerToolSystem 4 solved the problem.

  • by wchinook,

    wchinook wchinook Feb 18, 2015 9:59 PM in response to CraigJ
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 18, 2015 9:59 PM in response to CraigJ

    This quick and easy approach worked for me -

    1. Close all running applications

    2. Open Terminal and type the following command:

    sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store

    3. Terminal should prompt for admin password. Enter admin password and hit return.

    4. Shutdown mac

    5. Turn mac on

     

    As per - http://www.iphonetopics.com/ms-office-icon-missing-on-os-x-yosemite/#comment-843

     

    which also provides three other options for solutions.

  • by wchinook,

    wchinook wchinook Feb 18, 2015 10:08 PM in response to Di Keller
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 18, 2015 10:08 PM in response to Di Keller

    You've probably solved this by now, but if not - I had the same problem - for some reason I didn't have permission to access my com.apple.iconservices.store folder. To change this - select folder icon and right click and select the menu option to get info. When the info window opens, click the little arrow beside the "Sharing & Permissions" line, so that it points down and shows the access status. Click the little yellow lock in the bottom right corner so that it is unlocked. Then in the list of permissions, change the "Privilege" option for admin to Read & Write. Then re-lock the permissions (if you want).

     

    Then you should be able to do what you want with the com.apple.iconservices.store folder - however, the first solution posted here to the MS office icons problem worked very quickly and easily for me, without manually dealing with the caches folder - http://www.iphonetopics.com/ms-office-icon-missing-on-os-x-yosemite/#comment-843

  • by pwwwayne,

    pwwwayne pwwwayne Feb 19, 2015 8:01 AM in response to rawrawraw
    Level 1 (44 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 19, 2015 8:01 AM in response to rawrawraw

    This worked for me Yosemite Cache Cleaner

  • by oology,

    oology oology Mar 4, 2015 1:18 PM in response to wchinook
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iCloud
    Mar 4, 2015 1:18 PM in response to wchinook

    Neither the method of deleting com.apple.iconservices.store, nor the method of deleting the three caches (Library, System/Library, and Users/MyName/Library), have worked for me.

     

    The only Office program that I have installed is Word. Curiously I noticed that if I create and save a document in Word, its icon in the finder momentarily appears correctly, before reverting to the generic icon.

     

    I'm running OS X 10.10.2 and Office 14.4.8.

     

    Any other ideas?

  • by oology,

    oology oology Mar 4, 2015 1:27 PM in response to oology
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iCloud
    Mar 4, 2015 1:27 PM in response to oology

    It turns out that deselecting 'Show Icon Preview' for the desktop (not the file on the desktop) does indeed result in the correct icon being displayed.

     

    But how can I apply this setting to all Word documents in all folders, please?

  • by oology,

    oology oology Mar 13, 2015 7:37 AM in response to oology
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iCloud
    Mar 13, 2015 7:37 AM in response to oology

    Anyone?

  • by bmann2200,

    bmann2200 bmann2200 Apr 2, 2015 9:45 PM in response to bogdanbat
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 2, 2015 9:45 PM in response to bogdanbat

    had the same problem as you. no word or excel and VLC icons did the cache delete and reboot and bam there back,

    thank you i was going crazy

  • by callmygirl,

    callmygirl callmygirl Apr 6, 2015 8:56 AM in response to olaf-the-hairy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 6, 2015 8:56 AM in response to olaf-the-hairy

    This was the easiest and simplest fix. I increased to 16 pt font and the excel icons reappeared but still no word. Also some of the PDF files are not showing icons so Apply isn't being discriminatory against other companies but they are being annoying in not fixing their newest and best...

     

    Increasing the icon size in All My Files also helped.  It's obviously a drawing function of Yosemite, it doesn't 'read' certain sizes of icons.

  • by oology,

    oology oology Apr 6, 2015 12:26 PM in response to oology
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iCloud
    Apr 6, 2015 12:26 PM in response to oology

    After some further testing, I found that:

     

    1. I do want to have 'show icon preview' enabled; I don't want to have to disable that in order to fix the issue with Office icons

     

    2. New documents created in Word for Mac 2011 do have correct icons, which persist as far as I can tell. However, all doc and docx files that were already on my computer before installing Office do not have the correct icons.

     

    So I'd still appreciate help with this.

  • by avatar230,

    avatar230 avatar230 Apr 20, 2015 4:04 PM in response to shylocxs
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 20, 2015 4:04 PM in response to shylocxs

    I'm also experiencing this problem. I have a brand new 2015 MacBook running 10.10.3 and the MS Office 2016 public beta installed.

     

    I've tried deleting the com.apple.iconservices.store file as well as deleting all three cache folders (Library, System/Library and User/Library). Neither action fixed my problem.

     

    The one thing I can add is that I did find the icons are not completely broken on my machine -- they're only broken in Finder views with a text size of 12 or below. If, in column or list view, I increase the text size to 13 or above, my Word and Excel icons appear correctly both as a document preview (with icon preview checked on in the view options) or as a graphic icon (with icon preview unchecked in view options). If, however, the text size shrinks down to 12 or under, it does not matter if icon preview is checked or unchecked -- in both cases I'm left with a blank icon only.

  • by avatar230,

    avatar230 avatar230 Apr 20, 2015 10:35 PM in response to avatar230
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 20, 2015 10:35 PM in response to avatar230

    One other strange quirk of the problem I just discovered--

     

    If I go to one of the affected files on my system that's displaying a blank icon in Finder ("File.docx") and change the extension to be all capital letters ("File.DOCX"), the icon appears and begins working properly. Does this indicate one way or the other if the problem is a Yosemite bug or a Microsoft bug? Can anyone else confirm that capitalizing the letters of the file extension causes their icons to populate correctly?

  • by ChuckRoy,

    ChuckRoy ChuckRoy Apr 27, 2015 1:23 PM in response to guimarca
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 27, 2015 1:23 PM in response to guimarca

    This worked for me. Thanks guimarca

  • by ACPLE,

    ACPLE ACPLE Apr 29, 2015 4:14 AM in response to ChuckRoy
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Mac App Store
    Apr 29, 2015 4:14 AM in response to ChuckRoy

    I have found after doing a clean fresh install of OS X 10.10.3, the problem is 100% gone. I have tried this on my Macbook Pro/Air and Mac Pro. No more missing icon art if you wipe the Macintosh HD and give it a clean install of 10.10.3. Not ideal I know, but a complete solution.

  • by Chatta Ortega,

    Chatta Ortega Chatta Ortega Apr 29, 2015 11:25 AM in response to shylocxs
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 29, 2015 11:25 AM in response to shylocxs

    1. Click on the file name (under the actual icon)

    2. Change the file name..all I do, is delete a letter (i.e. dogstuff...I delete the last f)

    3. hit Return to close the file name. That should do it.

    4. open the file name again and rename as it was before, i.e. add back the f in dogstuff

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