Change Icon for embedded PDF file

Question

Hello,

For the past two hours I have been troubleshooting this error a user reported to me, say you open Excel 365 ProPlus and choose Insert -> Object -> Create from File and Browse to a PDF file. so far so good right? Now, you activate the checkbox "Display as Icon" and hit "Change icon". For some reason, the PDF icon is not automatically selected, this still works in Excel 2013. The only things that changed are the Windows 10 Build (1709 to 1809) and the installed Adobe product. (Adobe Acrobat XI Pro to Adobe Acrobat DC 2015) Can somebody explain to me where Excel finds the information for the associated icon? What I have also noticed: This still works fine in Word from Office 365 ProPlus. I have rebuilt the Icon Cache, checked registry keys where the Key "DefaultIcon" points to..everything looks fine, the path where Excel looks for the icon as changed apparently, I did not find any information on where Excel looks for information regarding icons for a certain file type. 

Example of Excel 365 ProPlus where this is not working anymore

Example of Excel 2013 ProPlus:

Any help is appreciated, thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Hi CNPhilip,

I can't repro the issue in the latest version of Excel(1910).

Could you click File > Account > Update Options to update Office 365 to latest version(1910) and see if the issue persist?

Regards,

Eric

Answer 2

Hi Eric,

Due to the fact that updates are handled by the IT department I am unable to update to 1910 at the moment, I am running 1902. I am pretty sure that the path is incorrect, as you can see on my first screenshot Excel is trying to extract the icon from Acrobat.exe in the installation directory. What would help me the most, is if you could maybe ask a developer where excel gets this path from. The correct path is under "C:\Windows\Installer{ID}\_PDFFILE.ico" but as you can see that is not the path that Excel has chosen.

Thanks.

Answer 3

Hi CNPhilip,

I'm sorry that I have no access to contact developer directly, but I navigate to the folder and I find all my PDF icon pictures are stored under C:\Windows\Installer{AC76BA86-7AD7-1033-7B44-AC0F074E4100}   

Please click Brower and navigate to the folder, then click one picture. The icon I choose show in the box.

Regards,

Eric

Answer 4

Hi Eric,

thanks for providing me with your proposed solution, unfortunately the setting does not stick. When I add another PDF file, it resets to the wrong location, and I have to navigate to the folder again which is pretty tiresome. Is there any way for me to contact the dev team? Perhaps in a different forum?

Thanks.