I am running MOSS 2007 and have just noticed that when I view items in a list that have an attachment, the file type icon is not displayed in the Attachment column, rather I get a red X in it's place with the word "Attachment". It does not matter what type of file I try to attach, I get the same result. The site does, however, display the correct file type icon for items in my document libraries, this just seems to be an issue with lists such as Tasks or custom lists. I am able to open the attachment from the list item detail page, so the attachment itself seems OK, I just can't figure out why the attachment icon isn't being displayed correctly. Thanks! Chanda

You are facing a security issue: the gif for the paperclip attachment is not reachable. Check your _layouts hive through your IIS and check the box Basic Authentication for that hive to see if it is solving your problem: it did at my implementation anyway.

Thanks Patrik, I modified the security settings through IIS as you described and did an iisreset but the icons still do not show up correctly. I have confirmed that the icons are in the images folder, they're just not showing up for list attachments. Chanda

I've double-checked the security just to make sure I haven't missed anything but no luck. I have, however, cleared up some additional details for my own sake which may help. The icon that is not being displayed is attach.gif (the small paper-clip image), not the individual doc-type icons (for things such as Word, PDF, etc.). There are two strange things that I've now figured out as well: 1) The attach.gif icon displays fine on my primary site, it just does not display for sub-sites, and 2) The attach.gif icon displays in the heading of the list (if I have an attachment column and a title column the paperclip icon is displayed above the attachment column next to the word Title over the title column), it just does not display for the individual row in the list that hasthe attachment. Hopefully that clarification will help with an answer. Thanks! Chanda

Hi Chanda, this is 100% exactly the same issue like we had. The attach.gif was displayed on some sites, on others it wasn't. Please check your security settings in IIS for the directories where the gif is stored and check the box Basic authentication. You have to do this through IIS and not on the physical file system, as these files are stored for each site in kind of a virtual hive. Please check it on the lowest level, as sometimes we noticed the security settings aren't inherited by subfolders for one reason or another.

I am looking at IIS right now at I can't see that there is more than one directory that the .gif is stored. In IIS Ihave a website called Intranet, and when I expand that site the only location that houses that icon is the virtual directory called '_layouts' which has the 'images' folder right beneath it. Both _layouts and images have Basic Authentication checked under Directory Security. I've even selected Basic Authentication for the entire Intranet website in IIS but still the attach.gif icon is not displayed for subsites. I have 4 sub-sites that were created within the Intranet site, and these are the areas that do not display the icon, however they do not show up in IIS (unless I just don't know where to look) so I'm not sure where else I need to be looking. Thanks

Hi, We're having exactly the same problem in MOSS, but I don't understand why basic authentication would be needed. I'd rather not use it if it is not necessary. What is wrong with Integrated Windows Authentication? Thanks,Mindy

Problem solved: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/min***lly/archive/2008/05/16/some-icons-disappear-in-moss.aspx Hope this helps someone. Mindy

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/min***lly/archive/2008/05/16/some-icons-disappear-in-moss.aspx This fixed our issue. Thanks! Admin had pointed the site to an alternate application pool while troubleshooting another issue and forgot about it.

I'm moving the thread to Admin. This is not a customization issue.

Thanks Mindy, this fixed the issue for me as well - somewhere along the line in testing I changed the Application Pool account and never switched it back.

A user reported this issue to me recently, and none of the solutions above resolved my issues. There is one entry which proposed modifying the docicon.xml file in :\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML. Most of us have attempted or successfully modified this file to get the pdf icon to show up (with iFilter). In my case, there were duplicate entries for the pdf icon location. Once I removed the duplicate and executed iisreset, my icons are properly showing up in the search results. I have always been able to see my document type icon in the library.I hope this helps someone that is currently having this issue. There were not very many "helpful" posts about this. Waylin

the site is down. can you please explain the solution? i have similar problem: sometimes i see the icon and sometimes i don't (even on the same page).

i tried to get to the site where the solution is supposed to be: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/min***lly/archive/2008/05/16/some-icons-disappear-in-moss.aspx but i receive a "not found" error, so i cannot view the solution. anybody have an idea of the correct site above which contains the solution to this problem ? thanks

I had this problem and in my case the issue was that the images virtual directory was configured to use a different application pool than either it's parent (_layouts) or the web application.Some time ago I had changed the application pool being used by this SharePoint site and the change must not have cascaded down to all the required locations. As soon as I changed the images virtual directory to use the same app pool the issue disappeared - it didn't require an IIS reset or anything.Hope that's helpful.-John

The links above have "***" in the middle and don't work... Here is the correct link: http://vspug.com/mindykelly/2008/05/16/some-icons-disappear-in-moss/ Mike Smith TechTrainingNotes.blogspot.com