BRETT BATIE

How to Modify a Program's Icon

It is possible to change just about any icon that comes with an application.  There are a few different applications that will help make this job easy and my favorite is resource hacker. The reason that I can think of that someone would want to change a programs icon are the following:

• Two programs have icons that look too similar
• The program comes with an icon that does not give a good representation of what the program does
• To have the coolest icons on the block

Resource Hacker
Replace Icon

The steps to replace an icon for a program are fairly simple. Just follow the below steps to modify the icons for any of your applications.  

1. Download Resource Hacker
2. Unzip the file and run ResHacker.exe
3. Open the program that contains an icon you would like to change (like C:\Program Files\Brett Batie\Excel on Multiple Monitors\runExcel.exe)
4. Click Actions→Replace Icon in the Menu Bar
5. Click the "Open file with new icon…" button
6. Select the new icon (like C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.exe)
7. Click the "Replace" button
8. Click File→Save in the Menu Bar
9. Close Resource Hacker All Done

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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5 Responses to “How to Modify a Program's Icon”

1. 
   Joe Says:
   June 12th, 2009 at 1:55 pm

   Thanks for the writeups, I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong but I'm running the .bat file to open Excel in Vista, and now all my icons for Excel files are gone. I tried to change the icon for the .bat file but I get the error saying "This is not a Win32 executable file". I can't get past step 3. Thanks.

2. 
   Brett Says:
   June 12th, 2009 at 2:05 pm

   Joe,

   The icon cannot be modified for a single bat file. The error is valid as only applications (example: myApp.exe) can have their icons modified.

   Concerning the excel icon, I wrote about another solution to open Excel in multiple windows that does not use a bat file. It has an associated icon (from Open Office) and this tutorial can be used to modify the icon if you would like it to be something different (like Microsoft Office's icon).

3. 
   Michelle Says:
   August 21st, 2009 at 2:40 pm

   Thanks for the solution to open in different windows! Yours is the only one that worked for me.
   The "modifying icon" solution sort of worked for me: my icons show the Excel icon but they are minature. It's hard to describe and I can't post a screen shot here for you to see. Picture a square thumbnail icon and the Excel icon is a smaller square inside the thumbnail square.

4. 
   James Cole Says:
   November 5th, 2009 at 12:33 pm

   Ditto to everything that Michelle said.

5. 
   bayo Says:
   October 22nd, 2010 at 6:38 am

   pls how do i change text(name of a program inside the software) inside a program