How to display the first page of an Office document as its icon

Windows users can choose to replace the generic icon of Office applications (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) with the Thumbnail preview of the first page while saving the file. Follow the instructions outlined in the post to make the first page of Office documents display as its icon.

Display the first page of an Office document as its icon

The method does not require you to install any third-party software or add an extension. A simple trick will do the job for you like Microsoft Office; itself includes the feature. It should be noted however that the feature is not enabled by default. To display the first page of an Office document as its icon, you will have to:

1. Keep preview images for individual Office documents
2. Keep all Office files with the thumbnail image.

The Office user can enable the feature for Word, Excel or PowerPoint files, individually or for all Office files simultaneously when saved with a thumbnail bearing the image of the first page of the file.

1] Keep preview images for individual Office documents

Open the file (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) for which you would like to add a thumbnail (Microsoft has named the feature as Thumbnail and not Preview).

Hit the ‘File’ tab on the Ribbon menu and choose ‘Save As’ option.

Select the desired location and in the Save As dialog, check ‘Save Thumbnail’ box that appears right beneath the ‘Authors’.

This will make the first page as the file icon on the system.

Finally, ‘Save’ to finish the process.

When done, you should see the saved document, appearing as Thumbnail (Preview) of the first page of the file.

2] Keep all Office files with the thumbnail image

If you would like to configure the above option permanently, i.e., always save the with Thumbnail (Preview) image, do the following,

Open a file (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint), go to the ‘File’ menu and select ‘Info’.

Next, choose the drop-down arrow adjacent to ‘Properties’ and select ‘Advanced Properties’ tab.

Now, in the Properties window that opens, check the ‘Save Thumbnails for all Word Documents’.

Click OK.

Now you can use this Thumbnail image and display it as the icon, as follows.

Launch ‘File Explorer’ and go to ‘Options’.

There, click on the ‘View’ tab, uncheck ‘Always show icons, never thumbnails‘, check ‘Display file icon on thumbnails’. When done, hit the ‘OK’ button.

Hope you find this tip useful.