Icon for Folder

Appreciate some assistance.

Have a folder on the desktop with Christmas info in it, and would like to have a Christmas icon showing, instead of the yellow folder.

Is there a way of assigning an icon to this folder?

Downloaded several icons from the net, but cant figure out how to make one stick on this folder.

OS: W98SE

 

Here's a workaround:
1) Don't create the folder on your desktop, but put it somewhere else on your hard drive.
2) Create a shortcut on your desktop that refers to the folder. You can assign a different icon to a shortcut

 

If you want to change the folder icon:
Make an icon and get the path to it. For example C:\My Documents\My Pictures\Santa.ico

create a text file and copy the following lines into it:
[.ShellClassInfo]
ICONFILE=Drive:\Path\Icon_name.extension


Save this text file by the name, desktop.ini in the folder whose icon you want to change.In this case, your Christmas Folder. To prevent this file from getting deleted change it's attributes to Hidden and Read Only
Then go to a Dos box and change the attributes of the Folder to system.
For instance, if I had a folder on the desktop named big
C:\Windows> attrib +S desktop\big (press enter)

 

Thank you for your replies.

Moved the folder out of the desktop using Explorer, then created its shortcut on the desktop. The Change Icon option then appeared and got the job done.

Will attempt to make an icon and get the path for it following procedures as posted. Using that on something else.



Will this procedure create an icon using a ".gif" file?

 

No. But you can change a gif to an icon using a free utility called Irfanview.
www.irfanview.com

 

The thing about Irfanview is the icons end up having a white background. You can use this program. Icon Edit32 to remove that.

http://home.att.net/~willowbrookemill/pricelesswarealphabetized.html#Graphics

On the same page as Icon Edit 32 is another utility I love.
It is called Icon snatcher. It will extract an icon from any kind of file and unlike Irfanview, which can also do this, there will be no background unless it's supposed to be there.

 

Mosaic1,

Thank you for the links.

Need to plan exactly what to do, but these utilities will come in handy. Have seen all sorts of Christmas clip art that are .gif, and was wondering if it could be used for icon material.

Have a good week.

 

FZWG,
You got me in the mood to decorate for Christmas. I went inot my dusty My Docs and got out this one. Have fun and Happy Holidays.

If you want to change every Folder on the Hard Drive to another Icon (all the same icon)
Try this. Open the Registry and navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\Microsoft\windows\current version\explorer\shell icons
Click on the right hand pane and select new>string Value
Name it 3
Modify it to the path of the icon you want to use to replace all those Yellow Folders.
Let's say you had a folder on the desktop named icons and it had an icon named new.ico
You would modify the string value to read
C:\windows\desktop\icons\new.ico
Close regedit. Step two is redrawing the icons. Go to display properties and select effects. Place a check in the "use large icons" box. Let the icons redraw. Set the box back again. That's it.


Christmas Trees maybe? Mine are all roses. But I think I will be changing them for the Season.

Every Folder will be changed except the ones you changed using the previous method. Now you have a choice.

 

Mosaic1,

Hey!! That might be really cool. A few Christmas trees here and there to replace those dull yellow folders.

Thank you for the info.

 

You know when you go to change an icon if you pick from the file types All files tou can use .bmp files too.

 

hewee,

Thanks for the info.

Have a good weekend.

 

Your welcome.

But I think it uses the upper left of the image so you may want to make a copy of the .bmp and resize it and use that .bmp in you shortcut.