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#140: How can I define a custom icon for some folder?

In MS Windows you can define any custom icon for desired folder instead default icon (yellow folder picture). Also you can define own string description which will be displayed in Explorer application.

To do it is very easy task:
1. you must create a desktop.ini file with special structure:
[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=yourFileWithIcon.ico
IconIndex=0
InfoTip=your description text

2. you must set a System flag to attributes of your folder

A first part is solved in Delphi in a few lines of code:

with TINIFile.Create(yourFolderName + '\desktop.ini') do
  try
    WriteString('.ShellClassInfo', 'IconFile', 'yourFileWithIco.ico');
    WriteString('.ShellClassInfo', 'IconIndex', '0'); //icon index
    WriteString('.ShellClassInfo', 'InfoTip', 'your description text');
    {flush a buffered INI-file to disk}
    UpdateFile; 
  finally
    Free
  end;

A second (to set a system attribute) is not hard too:
SetFileAttributes(PChar(yourFolderName), FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM);


Published: May 20, 2002

See also
 
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ABA Database Convert
ABA Picture Convert
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Paradox ActiveX
Metafile Convert
Clarion to Text converter
ABA Document Convert
 
 


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