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How To Change the Icon of a Shortcut Through IShellLink

Summary

This article describes how to create a shortcut and change the icon that is displayed for the shortcut.

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More Information

IShellLink provides methods for obtaining and setting the icon for a shortcut. The steps for changing the icon for a shortcut are as follows:

  1. Obtain the IPersistFile interface from the IShellLink using QueryInterface with IID_IPersistFile.
  2. Call IShellLink::SetIconLocation with the file containing the icon (in this case the file is either a .dll or .exe) and the index of the icon.
  3. Call IPersistFile::Save to update the shortcut.

Sample Code

Following sample code creates a shortcut and sets the shortcut's icon to an icon contained in shell32.dll:
   /*PARAMETERS
   fname_to_create_link  = (e.g.) "c:\\mytextfile.txt"
   lnk_fname = (e.g.) "yourname.lnk"
   */ 

   void CreateLinkThenChangeIcon(LPTSTR fname_to_create_link,
                                 LPTSTR lnk_fname)
   {
   HRESULT hres;
   IShellLink *psl = NULL;
   IPersistFile *pPf = NULL;
   WORD wsz[256];
   TCHAR buf[256];
   int id;
   LPITEMIDLIST pidl;

   hres = CoCreateInstance(  CLSID_ShellLink,

                           NULL,
                           CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER,
                           IID_IShellLink,
                           (LPVOID*)&psl);
   if(FAILED(hres))
      goto cleanup;
   hres = psl->QueryInterface(IID_IPersistFile, (LPVOID*)&pPf);
   if(FAILED(hres))
      goto cleanup;
   hres = psl->SetPath(fname_to_create_link);
   if(FAILED(hres))

      goto cleanup;
   //place the shortcut on the desktop
   SHGetSpecialFolderLocation(hwnd, CSIDL_DESKTOP, >pidl);

   SHGetPathFromIDList(pidl, buf);

   lstrcat(buf,"\\");
   lstrcat(buf,lnk_fname);

   MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0, buf, -1, wsz, MAX_PATH);

   hres = pPf->Save(wsz, TRUE);

   if(FAILED(hres))

      goto cleanup;

   GetSystemDirectory(buf, 256);

   lstrcat(buf,"\\shell32.dll");

   hres = psl->SetIconLocation(buf, 1);

   if(FAILED(hres))

      goto cleanup;

   hres = psl->GetIconLocation(buf, 256, &id);

   if(FAILED(hres))

      goto cleanup;

   pPf-&Save(wsz, TRUE);

   cleanup:

   if(pPf)

      pPf->Release();

   if(psl)

      psl->Release();

   }

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Keywords: kbhowto, kb

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Article Info
Article ID : 179904
Revision : 1
Created on : 1/7/2017
Published on : 6/22/2014
Exists online : False
Views : 238