All of sudden you notice that your Microsoft Office icons are missing or replaced with generic white icons. You perform icon cache rebuild but still issue remains.

Cause

The Office installer places all Office applications icons in the Windows Installer folder. When this folder becomes missing or unavailable, then Office applications loose icons to show up.

The setting of Icon path is saved in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (HKCR) registry as shown below:

PS C:\> reg query HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Addin\DefaultIcon
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Addin\DefaultIcon
    (Default)    REG_SZ    C:\windows\Installer\{91140000-0011-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}\xlicons.exe,6
PS C:\>

You can also use FileTypesMan utility that will lists all the extensions along with their Default Icon path as shown below:

Solution

You need to copy over Office installer icon folder from an existing PC where its available and have it renamed to the path that is referred by Office applications on your system. In our case its : C:\windows\Installer\{91140000-0011-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}\ folder.

Finally restart your system so that Office applications will pick their icons.

If you don’t have any working system with Office Icons, you can download the Icon from here. Then have the folder renamed to match your Office installation path.

Download

The following download is an example of Office icons you can use to restore them in a corrupted Office folder in Windows Installer.

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