When I receive emails with Office attachments (Word, Excel, PP) the icon in the attachment bar is a blank icon. The file name and extension are fine. I re-established the default program for the various extensions and now the attachments will open from the email but even after that when an email arrives the icons are blank. (They are normally the Word or Excel or PowerPoint icon). Is there a setting to cause Outlook to show the proper icon?

Larry,

This is an unusual issue. try the following and see if anyone of these options corrects your issue;

1. Under File > Options > Mail options > Editor Options > Advanced > Display Email Content; confirm the setting "Show Picture Placeholder is unchecked. By default this setting is grayed out unless you access this option via an open message.

2. Under File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Attachment Handling > ( first un-check show attachment preview if checked ) then select Attachment and document previewer. Confirm everything in this window is checked.

Hope this helps.

For me, Office program attachments showed the correct icon, but the pdf attachments did not show the pdf icon (it showed the icon that means there is no program associated with it). However, the pdf would still open as a pdf. Just the icon was wrong.

My solution was to go to a pdf file in Explorer (any file will work), right click, and choose "Open With" then "Choose Program" -- the last thing on the list. The Adobe Reader was selected, but the checkbox next to "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" was not checked. I checked it. Outlook still showed the same icon. I closed Outlook and re-opened it, and voila, now pdf attachments show the correct icon! Hope that helps you.


Maybe this will work with Office documents as well if the icon is not showing properly. You have to go into a file of that type to do the "Choose Program". Always check the box.