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How to copy INDIVIDUAL folder icon to another folder?
Hello,
I have just discovered this forum, and I have to say I only have Win XP, but I don't know of another forum where I could get help with my question (not DC, anyway, I tried!). Perhaps, you could answer for XP specifically, or for Win7, and I would have a look if your solution works similarly in XP then.
I know you can assign individual icons to folders, instead of the default one, but I want to make groups, i.e. some folders red, some folders blue, etc., for hundreds of folders, so I want to do this by an AHK script, working on such groups; I know AHK but don't know anything about folder icons, except for the fact there are several, concurrent tools, both free and paid, but as said, I would like to work by scripting the things to do.
Now I started with the Folderico tool, and I saw that in each folder you reassign the icon of, it puts a desktop.ini, and the icon file:
desktop.ini with:
[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=ShedkoFolderico3_0627.ico
IconIndex=0
ConfirmFileOp=0
or with:
[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=ShedkoFolderico3_16409495.ico
IconIndex=0
ConfirmFileOp=0
and then the icon files,
ShedkoFolderico3_0627.ico
and
ShedkoFolderico3_16409495.ico
respectively.
First discovery: Even when it was the very same icon, Folderico named the icon files differently, most of the time, but not in every case, and even, in some instances, it gave the same name "_0627" to different icons (in different folders of course).
Then I played around a bit with these .ini files, and with the .ico names, and my second discovery was that I was free to rename the icon files as I pleased; whenever the .ico file name was identical with its listing within the .ini file, the icon of the respective .ico file was shown, not the default one. But it's important to bear in mind these were .ini files originally created by Folderico.
Then I replaced those .ico files by other .ico files, i.e. I took the .ico file of a "blue" folder, copied it into a "red" folder, adjusted the .ini file of the "red" folder to the new .ico name (or vice versa, renamed the freshly imported "blue" .ico file to the one listed in the "red" .ini file, and indeed, my third discovery, all this worked perfectly, i.e. the individual icon went to "blue". But again, it's important to bear in mind I did these renames, of the .ico files and within the respective .ini files, with folders to which I had originally assigned individual icons by Folderico.
These remarks are so important because my fourth discovery now was, my tries to copy existing .ico files, and the assorted, existing .ini files, from one of these folders, to another folder, to which previously I had NOT assigned an individual icon by Folderico, the icon remained the default one, and I tried this with several such combinations. So this playing around of mine was successful only with folders having been properly assigned any individual folder icon beforehand, but not with "virgin" folders with their default icon yet.
So this indicates that Folderico, or any of its competitors, does not only create those .ico files and the respective .ini files for these folders, but does something more, within the dephts of Windows: What might this be?
It is evident the tasks mentioned above, could easily be scripted, and depending on what would have to be done in Windows, additionally, that could also be scripted, even to the point of API accesses and such, but I need to know what is the missing element here such tools do, on top of just copying .ico files and creating the respective .ini files within those folders in question.
I would greatly appreciate any help, hint, explanation, link...