HOWTO: Change the Icon of a Shortcut Through IShellLink

• Microsoft Win32 Software Development Kit (SDK)

SUMMARY

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

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

   /*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();

   } 

Additional query words:

Keywords          : kbLinks kbNTOS400 kbWinOS2000 kbWinOS95 kbWinOS98 kbGrpShell 
Version           : WINDOWS:
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbhowto 

Last Reviewed: June 24, 1999