...DT icons for anything but shortcuts do not have a 'Change Icon' option in Properties. I wanted to have custom icons for some notes in .txt format that I had put on the desktop; I had to drag the files back to my work folder and created shortcuts from there.
Any other ideas?
This is by design (as Microsoft would say), you can change the icons for the standard desktop system icons from the personalise option (my computer, network Etc.). The icon used for text files or word documents are set as one per class and can only be set individually by the method you used
If i understand you correctly, right click on the shortcut in question and create a shortcut, you'll then get to customize the icon normally.
When you create a new text file, the file is displayed with a fixed standard icon to that type of file. If you wish to change this icon you can either change the icon for all text files, (which is rather involved and not recommended), or you can create a shortcut to the file and set the icon for the shortcut.
What I would actually do is create (or move) the text files in/to your documents folder, and then create any shortcuts on the desktop that point to the actual file
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