SharePoint 2013: Replace the PDF icon

18SEP2012

Icon madness

I uploaded a PDF to SharePoint 2013 and noticed that the PDD icon is not the official and recognizable Adobe PDF icon. In this article I will tell you how to replace the SharePoint 2013 PDF icon.

OOTB PDF icon from SharePoint 2013

Is it a document with a belt or what ? Nevermind I don’t like it and I am very certain that most of the users out there do not recognize the icon – and that is the main purpose of the icon right?

Search result with out-of-the-box SharePoint 2013 PDF icon

With SharePoint 2010 there was no PDF support out of the box – afaik there was no icon at all. I should be happy and quite right? Nope, created a small powershell that replaced the icon (either you place it next to the script or the script downloads it from the Adobe page).

The result will look like this – way better if you ask me.

Original PDF icon – as expected!

Same icon in a document library

Powershell to the rescue – once again!

And here comes the small script:

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######################################################################################### # by Max Melcher, http://melcher.it, @maxmelcher # Feel free to change and reuse as you wish - use on your own risk   # Script that replaces the OOTB SharePoint 2013 PDF icon with the orignal Adobe PDF icon. # Execute on each webfrontend #########################################################################################   #settings $destination = "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\icpdf.png"   #Check if the icon exists otherwise download it $item = Get-ChildItem pdficon_small.png -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue   #Helper function download{ # usage: download http://url c:\temp param([string]$URL, [string]$destination) Write-Host "Downloading $URL ..." $clnt = new-object System.Net.WebClient -ErrorVariable err -ErrorAction "SilentlyContinue" $clnt.DownloadFile($url,$destination) if ([String]::IsNullOrEmpty($err) -eq $true) { Write-Output " - Download completed." } else { Write-Error "Download ERROR - Check URL: $err" } }   function RestartIIS(){ $title = "Restart IIS" $message = "Do you want to restart the local IIS?" $yes = New-Object System.Management.Automation.Host.ChoiceDescription "Yes","Restarts IIS." $no = New-Object System.Management.Automation.Host.ChoiceDescription "No","Silently continues..." $options = [System.Management.Automation.Host.ChoiceDescription[]]($yes, $no) $result = $host.ui.PromptForChoice($title, $message, $options, 0) if ($result -eq 0){ Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "Restarting IIS" iisreset /noforce } }     if ($item) { Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "Supplied icon found - overwriting" Copy-Item $item -Destination $destination -Force } else { Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "Downloading icon from Adobe" Download "http://www.adobe.com/images/pdficon_small.png" $destination }   Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "Icon replaced"   #Icon will only be changed after iisreset or reboot RestartIIS     Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "done!"