Add Additional File Type Icons to SharePoint 2010

Occasionally, there may be a need to show additional file icons for different file types in SharePoint as different business areas work with different types of content. In this scenario, we will add a specific icon for Adobe Photoshop files (.psd).

Out of the box, SharePoint 2010 has a generic icon to display for Photoshop files in our example farm:

To add a more specific icon, we only need to do a couple of steps:

• First, find an icon that represents the document type. The icon should be in a web-ready format (png, gif, jpg), and sized to approximately 16x16 pixels. In this example, we will use a png file:

• Then, copy the file to the following directory to one of your front-end web servers. The following steps will need to be done on each front-end server. The file should be copied to the <14Hive>\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\ directory. In our example farm, using a default install location, the directory is:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\

• Next, open the docIcon.xml file located in the 14Hive under TEMPLATE\XML. Again, in our example farm, the location is:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML\

• Find the <ByExtension> element, and add the following line inside of it:

<Mapping Key="psd" Value="psd-small.png"/>If you already have an existing entry, just modify the value attribute to match the new icon.

• Finally, perform an IISReset to have SharePoint pick up the changes. We now see the new icon in place