Odd Icon for Word Files

[Gordon Bentley-Mix on news.microsoft.com]

This is being posted through the web interface, so I hope it shows up before
I die.

Recently I've noticed that the icon associated with some Word files (97-2003
format) in Windows Explorer in 'Details' view (and yes, Peter, I *do* mean
Windows Explorer - and I'm pretty sure that anybody with the nous to be able
to answer my question knows what Windows Explorer is - so don't try to tell
me that I mean something different) has a little black square with a white
dot on it in the lower left corner. If I change the view to something like
'Tiles' or 'Icons', which enlarges the icon, the white dot becomes a white
circle with what might be clock hands in it. It appears that these files with
the odd icon haven't been touched in a while (2 years or more?), although not
all old files have it, and if I open one, make a change and save it again,
the icon goes back to the standard one. I thought maybe it was a Windows
thing and was going to post in a Windows NG, but I've got a very few old
Excel files (amongst others), and the icon for them is normal. However, some
old PDFs that were created from Word files original do have the odd icon.

Any ideas?

Note that this is in a corporate setting at a client site running Windows
XP, and the files are located both on my local machine and on the LAN.
Unfortunately, I don't have any other system to compare to; all of my other
computers are less than 2 years old or running a different version of
Windows/Word.
--
Cheers!

Gordon Bentley-Mix
Word MVP

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup.

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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What you don't say is which version of Windows this is. I've got plenty of
ancient Word files (some so old they have DOS-style 8.3 filenames), many of
them untouched for years, and I haven't seen this under Windows XP.

What I might guess is that this is something related to a backup scheme. I
believe some programs used for backing up data mark files in some way to
indicate that they've already been backed up and haven't subsequently been
changed. Once you edit such a file, that flag would be changed so that the
backup software would know to include the edited file in the next scheduled
backup. This of course assumes that the software is set to do incremental
rather than complete backups.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

"Gordon Bentley-Mix on news.microsoft.com"

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Oops, sorry. Didn't scroll down to see your last paragraph until after I'd
sent my post. I can definitely confirm I haven't seen anything like this
under Windows XP. Does the LAN have some sort of backup scheme?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Jay Freedman]

There were a couple of threads here a month ago or so, where it was found
that the latest Symantec/Norton suite was changing the icons of files that
either were backed up or needed to be backed up -- I've forgotten which.
Possibly other "kitchen sink" PC managers have similar icon mods.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

This is being posted through the web interface, so I hope it shows up before
I die.

Recently I've noticed that the icon associated with some Word files (97-2003
format) in Windows Explorer in 'Details' view (and yes, Peter, I *do* mean
Windows Explorer - and I'm pretty sure that anybody with the nous to be able
to answer my question knows what Windows Explorer is - so don't try to tell
me that I mean something different)

You don't have the sense that God gave a goose, do you.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

That's what I thought I vaguely remembered, then, I guess.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Gordon Bentley-Mix]

You don't have the sense that God gave a goose, do you.

Quoth Mr. Pot...

 

[Gordon Bentley-Mix]

Hmm... The Corp in question did implement some version of Norton a while
back, and I don't recall seeing these odd icons prior. Dunno if they have a
backup scheme, but I would imagine that they do. It's a major Australian
bank that's running the infrastructure for its NZ subsidiaries.

Oh well. Nothing to worry about really. The files still behave as expected.
Just an oddity that I thought somebody might have run into before and
recognise.