Q: Where have my MS icons gone in Yosemite?

Do you have Office for Mac 2011 14.4.5 installed and working?

Try selecting one of the files, Get Info, and set it to open with Microsoft Word. Then click Change All...

Maybe they are just not associated with Word, currently.

I noticed in OS X 10.9.5 that occasionally, when I boot, the Finder does not paint any Desktop icons with their expected image. If I open Terminal, and type:

killall Finder

when the Finder restarts, the images on the icons are restored.

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.

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.

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.

Ditto on the MS Office icons issue and no solution. I've also tried all the suggestions here to no avail.  I will add, that I uninstalled MS Office, restarted, and then re-installed thinking maybe the issue was with MS, but nothing. Keep me posted if anyone figures out the solution.  Feeling a bit a

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.

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?

Same issue. I noticed that when viewed in coverflow the icons appear as they should. Also, locking the file (Cmd+I > Locked) resolves the issue, as does increasing the icon size above 128px (Cmd+J).

Not terribly useful solutions I'm afraid, but perhaps this gives people more knowledgeable than me something to work with.

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