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The other day I upgraded Mozilla Firefox, since then, when I save a Word document to my desktop, I get a weird looking icon instead of the "normal" Word icon.

  • 7 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by plrcps

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I'm sorry, I don't understand how to use this help page. I'm not sure what to do. I click on post question, and the question doesn't post. Please do the best you can to help me, Thanks.

I'm sorry, I don't understand how to use this help page. I'm not sure what to do. I click on post question, and the question doesn't post. Please do the best you can to help me, Thanks.

Chosen solution

Does the icon appear to be a tiny preview of the content of the actual document? Office has a feature to display thumbnail images of documents. You may have noticed in the Save As dialog you can check a box for "Save Thumbnail".

In searching about this, I didn't find a clear way to block those from displaying once they are in the document.

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What is the file extension of those files? Are there more file types that give this problem?

You should be able to change this icon in the Properties via the right-click context menu of that shortcut.

Can you attach a screenshot?

  • Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot
  • Make sure that you do not exceed the maximum size of 1 MB
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The file extension is .docx. Thanks for the info about screenshots, I didn't know how to do that with Windows 8.1. I made a copy of the screenshot and cropped it to show just the icon, and I'm attaching it.

Thanks for your help.

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Open a file browser on your computer. On one of these icons, right click and select Properties. Look for the Opens With in the menus. Does it open with the Word program or something else?

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When I right click on Properties, the message box says it's saved with word. I've tried a few times, and I can save the document as a word document. But, for some reason, when I save a word document to the desktop, the icon looks weird.

I've tried saving an Excel document to the desktop, and I don't have a problem.

Maybe I should just try to uninstall the Firefox upgrade, and see if the Word icons display normally.

Thanks for your help.

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Is it the file itself, or a shortcut.

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Chosen Solution

Does the icon appear to be a tiny preview of the content of the actual document? Office has a feature to display thumbnail images of documents. You may have noticed in the Save As dialog you can check a box for "Save Thumbnail".

In searching about this, I didn't find a clear way to block those from displaying once they are in the document.

more options

Thank you for your help, I appreciate it.