# PC Magic?  MS Word Icons Disappears!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pc-magic-ms-word-icons-disappears/588405>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 9, 2011, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pc-magic-ms-word-icons-disappears/588405 "2011-07-09T12:05:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jinx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pc-magic-ms-word-icons-disappears/588405/1 "2011-07-09T12:05:04Z")

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The “Word” icon on our desktop, the icon within the “Start” menu, and the icon under MS Office (nested under Start -\> Programs) are all gone. Yet, I can still open Word docs, so the software is unaffected. My wife thinks she may have done (or, mouse-clicked) something to cause this. Anyone know (a) what she did, and (b) how to fix?

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**Author:** ![grimpixie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@grimpixie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grimpixie)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pc-magic-ms-word-icons-disappears/588405/2 "2011-07-09T12:10:30Z")

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Not much wisdom to add except that I have had this happen to me on one of the computers at work - never worked out what the cause was, but you should be able to replace the icon by copying a shortcut to the WINWORD.EXE file in C:\Program Files\Office\etc

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pc-magic-ms-word-icons-disappears/588405/3 "2011-07-09T12:15:31Z")

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Heck, I’d just do a search for winword.exe to find the path. There are a few variations of where the file can be, but it’s always called winword.exe.

Hold down Control and Shift drag the winword.exe file to where you want it on your start menu. Then you’ll probably want to go in, right click, and choose rename.

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**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pc-magic-ms-word-icons-disappears/588405/4 "2011-07-09T15:24:39Z")

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There’s a process (in Vista, I think) that happily cleans up unused icons. Remember that XP used to tell you “you have unused icons” in a popup? Vista went one better and deletes things every week without asking you. I haven’t heard the same complaint from Win7, so I think MS finally clued in.

There’s a procedure to turn off this job in the Scheduler, IIRC.

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**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pc-magic-ms-word-icons-disappears/588405/5 "2011-07-09T22:15:12Z")

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My gf’s desktop lost all its Office icons when I recently swapped out the motherboard. Creepy.

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**Author:** ![yoyodyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a9a28c/32.png) [@yoyodyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyodyne)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2011, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pc-magic-ms-word-icons-disappears/588405/6 "2011-07-10T01:06:12Z")

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Try [rebuilding the icon cache](http://majorgeeks.com/Icon_Cache_Rebuilder_d6557.html).