March 18, 2024

Restoring Outlook “Special” Icon on the Desktop

This icon actually takes you to the program properties dialog boxes when you right click o­n them and click the Properties command. Sometimes an errant program can wipe out these special icons. Here's what you need to do to get them back:


  1. Open the Registry Editor (regedt32) from the Run command.

  2. Navigate to the following Registry key:HKEY LOCAL MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Desktop \ NameSpace

  3. Once you're there, click the Edit menu, point to New and click Key.

  4. Change the name of the key to (make sure you include the curly brackets):{00020D75-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

  5. Close the Registry editor and right click o­n your desktop and click Refresh. You should see the Outlook icon appear o­n your desktop again.

Jason Benway

Christ follower, husband, father, IT geek, and Xbox gamer

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