Making your Document Libraries more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

Does your company primarilly use PDF files?  Do you wish you could subsitute the boring blank document icon  with the standard Adobe Acrobat PDF icon ?  Never fear, Bamboo is here to give you simple steps you can do to your SharePoint server to display the PDF icon for all files with extension .PDF.

1. Go to Adobe web site and read their mumbo jumbo about terms of use and download the official PDF icon (grab the small icon).
2. On your SharePoint server (if you are running a Farm, go to your web front end server) and copy the PDF image file to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\ directory.  This will make sure that the user has enough access rights to the file.  Note - If you are running WSS v2 or SPS 2003, copy the image file to this directory C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\.
3. Open the DOCICON.XML file found in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML\ in a Notepad.  *Note - If you are running WSS v2 or SPS 2003, open the file found in this directory C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\XML\.
4. Insert the following line
   
   <Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdficon_small.gif"/>
   
   Where pdficon_small.gif is the name of the file you just added to the IMAGES folder.
5. Restart IIS.

Presto!  You are now displaying PDF icons in the Types column.  You can of course repeat these steps for any other files you load to your SharePoint that are not Office extension (for example AutoCAD Drawings).