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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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127 replies

Oct 18, 2014 6:28 AM in response to shylocxs

Then, if it were me, I would perform a Safe Boot, to purge some system caches and rebuild others.


  • Press and hold shift key immediately upon hearing boot chime

    Release when horizontal grey progress bar appears on boot screen

  • Press and hold shift key immediately after entering password, and before right arrow login

    Release when Finder menu bar present

  • Optional

    Select contents of login-dir/Library/Caches, and move to Trash (do not delete Trash yet).

  • Reboot normally

    Empty Trash if prior Optional performed


Re-evaluate desktop icons for proper appearance.

Oct 18, 2014 8:59 PM in response to shylocxs

Also having the same issue, not just with MS icons. Tried all the suggestions above but unfortunately no change. I updated Mavericks with the Yosemite Beta and did not have this issue but I did a clean install of the public release. Don't know if that had something to do with creating the problem. It is annoying more than anything else. Hopefully Apple can come up with a fix soon.

Oct 18, 2014 9:15 PM in response to kensmith26

Me too, and not just MS icons, as well. Lost all my Parallels links and all drive links on the desktop, just about anything that wasn't Apple or that was customized. None of the steps listed above worked for me either. I even tried re-pasting new icons, but they disappeared faster than I could paste them back in. My solution was to create all new aliases for the document links, and reinstalled Office 365 Mac 2011 to get the program icons back. Funny thing - the dock icons weren't affected. What a mess. Glad I did this upgrade on a Mac I don't use much. Beta 6 still working fine on my other one and none of this happened during the Beta installs or updates.

Oct 18, 2014 11:37 PM in response to kensmith26

Same here; I upgraded from Beta 6 to a clean install and lost it all. On my other Mac, I just ran the Beta updates and everything is running properly. There seems to have been a lot things that went weird between Beta 6 and Thursday's disaster and it's taking a long time to get the fixes, probably because there are so many and they are across the entire platform in strange places that were working fine in Beta.

Oct 19, 2014 12:54 AM in response to shylocxs

I am having the exact same issue.....all the adobe and maxon icons are now white. Why was I such a fool to upgrade to Yosemite? I'm on the online chat with apple support now, they are refusing to acknowledge this is a problem and stating this is normal...surely Apple isn't trying to make it so non apple programs cannot have regular icons?

Oct 20, 2014 7:52 AM in response to shylocxs

Further to my last, if you simply need a quick fix while Apple gets around to fixing this bug you can do the following:


  1. Select a Problem File in Finder
  2. Cmd+I to open Info Pane
  3. Check 'Locked' to reveal correct preview icon
  4. Click on icon in top left of info pane to highlight and use Cmd+C to copy
  5. Uncheck 'Locked'
  6. Alt+Cmd+Space to open a Finder Search Window
  7. Type App Name of Problem File and select it under 'kinds' revealing all the files of this type on your HDD
  8. Cmd+A to select all files
  9. Alt+Cmd+I to open Multiple File Inspector Window
  10. Click on Icon in top left to highlight
  11. Cmd+C to paste copied icon
  12. Wait a while...
  13. BOSH!! - You have now replaced the icon for all your files of a certain type. Obviously any new files will need updating on the fly, but at least your OS doesn't look **** now!
  14. Perhaps someone more intelligent can suggest how to change the default icon for new files of a certain type

Oct 20, 2014 8:09 AM in response to olaf-the-hairy

Hadn't tried the resizing approach, and it sort of worked. When my icons on the desktop are 36x36 or larger then the correct icon shows up (but I like to keep my icons at 20x20)! Anything lower and they return to the blank white icon. This is not happening for me with every file, just MS Word and Excel (Powerpoint is fine... weird... I wonder if that's because I frequently open Powerpoint files with Keynote first?). If I click on "Show Icon Preview" using Command-J then the correct preview icon shows up but not the normal graphic preview.


Apple?

Where have my MS icons gone in Yosemite?

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