Outlook is showing generic icons: How do I restore FileSite’s specific icons?
Sometimes the FileSite or Email Management icons get misplaced. In my experience, the problem usually affects only one person rather than being widespread.
More than one situation can cause this issue.
Possible cause: Icon storage corrupted
I’ve seen this error reported in connection with a user’s inbox. The inbox uses blank white icons instead of displaying Email Management’s specific icons. Specifically, the email icon which ought to look like a filed email with a green check-mark can instead appear like this:
In this scenario, the helpdesk can force FileSite to reload the icons, by updating the user’s registry.
- You must be logged in to the machine as the user who has reported the problem.
- Exit all Microsoft Office and PDF editor programs.
- Launch the registry editor and navigate to HKCU.
- Tell FileSite to re-load those icons when next launched: set IconFormInstalled to 0.
- HKCU\Software\Interwoven\WorkSite\8.0\FileSite\IconFormInstalled
- Start Outlook, and when it is loaded, click to expand the FileSite navigation tree if it is not already expanded.
- Meanwhile, watch the status messages displayed as Outlook launches and the FileSite navigation tree is displayed. A brief message will appear, saying that the icons are being loaded.
If corrupted storage was causing this problem, the icons will now appear correctly.
Possible cause: Display scaling not set to a supported percentage
I’ve seen this error reported in conjunction with the icons in FileSite’s navigation tree. Outlook shows its default folder icons before it loads the FileSite custom ones, and if it cannot load FileSite’s, the yellow ones remain visible. FileSite’s specific icons usually appear on top of the generic icons, and cover them completely. What if there is a size mismatch?
This problem scenario is specific to the display resolution not being set to 100%. The non-standard DPI scaling appears to cause the generic folder icons to be a larger size than the FileSite icons. The larger folder icon may appear behind the FileSite icon, looking like a yellow rectangle. If the FileSite icons are completely missing, the generic folder icon is all that you would see.
In this scenario, the helpdesk can reset the display to 100% DPI scaling, and restart Outlook. If the display scaling was the source of the problem, the icons will now appear correctly.
One thought on “FileSite icons missing or blank?”
Note from Sandy: this may look familiar to long-time readers… half of this information was originally blogged here in May 2012. In multiple website revisions across multiple hosts, the article was somehow left behind.
I was contacted by a reader last week who wanted this exact information, so I’ve retrieved the article from backup and re-published it.
In addition, I added the section about display scaling: I learned of that scenario after posting the original article.
Enjoy!