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

Following is sample code that 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 = CreateInstance(  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();
   
   }

Keywords          : UsrShell
Version           : WINNT:
Platform          : winnt
Issue type        : kbhowto