Office Icons are All White

See if rebuilding the icon cache helps.
Icon Cache - Rebuild

Thanks for that. There were a lot of good suggestions listed there and I tried them all.

One this one link:
Icon Cache - Rebuild did have two issues:
C:\>DEL "%localappdata%\IconCache.db" /A
Could Not Find C:\Users\rshuell001\AppData\Local\IconCache.db

DEL "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*" /A
Could Not Find C:\Users\rshuell001\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\ic
cache*


Unfortunately, I still have the same problem. Ugh! What else can I try?

If the suggestion by Ranger4 doesn't fix your problem, run a System File Check (SFC).
See if SFC finds issues that can't be fixed and let us know, here's an SFC tutorial:
SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker

In post #1 you stated

For a couple days now I have had a problem with my office icons, and actually files with a PDF extension too.
I think I accidentally deleted something in the cache, or whatever

If none of the suggestions help, can you explain what you did and how you deleted something in cache, or whatever ?
I don't know if an Office repair could fix problems with PDF files.

Did you look in the Recycle Bin and see if the deleted files are there ?

The problems started on Sunday when I ran WinDirStat and found lots of superfluous files on my machine. I deleted several unnecessary files, and apparently I deleted some critical files in the process. The problems got worse sand worse Monday & Tuesday. By Wednesday, I conceded and asked my IT department to re-image my machine.

I've been using WinDirStat for many years and never had these problems before. At first, I thought I made a small mistake, but it turned out to be a very big mistake.

Thanks for trying to help out, everyone.