(Win7) How to show icons for some file types and thumbnails for others?

[Dew itt right]

I've been googling around but can't seem to find an answer to this seemingly simple question. The documents and spreadsheets on my desktop show up as a thumbnail preview of the file (which is kinda stupid because all of the documents and spreadsheets look the exact same). So I want these to just show the Word or Excel icon instead. I know you can go to:

Explorer>Tools>Folder Option>View>Files and Folders>"Always show icons, never thumbnails"

But then my picture files just show the Windows Picture Viewer icon instead of the picture thumbnail. I'm just wondering if there's a way to assign icon or thumbnail settings to specific file types or extensions? I'd like my pictures to have thumbnails but all other file types to show only icons. I'm currently using Windows 7 and system details are in the sig...

 

[Snowknight26]

If you don't explicitly tell Word or Excel to save a thunbmail of the file along with the file, it will use the default Word/Excel document icon (which happens to look like a document from either of those programs). Can't you just change the default icon to something else?

To answer your question, though, no, I don't think it's possible.

 

[structured89]

Uncheck "Save Thumbnail" as you are saving a word or excel file, it's on the screen where you choose a location to save

 

[Dew itt right]

Uncheck "Save Thumbnail" as you are saving a word or excel file, it's on the screen where you choose a location to save

Perfect, thanks! I never noticed that checkbox before. We've always used OpenOffice and it must save the thumbnail by default because we've never checked the box before. The thumbnails has always just appeared as soon as the file was created. Now it's just a matter of reopening the files and resaving them without the thumbnail. Thanks for helping with this nuisance...

 

[J-Will]

Cant you do the view on a per folder basis? So your My Docs folder you could view icons, but the My Pictures folder view the thumbnail.

 

[Dew itt right]

Cant you do the view on a per folder basis? So your My Docs folder you could view icons, but the My Pictures folder view the thumbnail.

Probably but the desktop often has both file types so I'd lose the picture thumbnails if I set it in the folder options. Resaving without thumbs seems to work best...