I’m a big fan of MS Paint for its simplicity. And Paint is available in all Windows after all. But I didn’t realize that Paint can create ico files too.
Whenever I tried to save a file in paint, I drop down file types available and I’ve never seen .ico, so I thought I can’t save it. But you know, if you give file name with .ico, Paint create icon files for you.
You can use those icon files for your folders or even for favico. It’s cool!!
I hate to disappoint you, but this is not true. It is still saved in the selected format and not as an .ico despite having that extension.
well, as far as I have tested, I can use those ico files as folder icon. That’s what I mean in my article
TO SAVE A PICTURE AS AN ICO FILE IN PAINT, YOU NEED TO USE QUOTATION MARKS AROUND THE FILE NAME:
ie. “Test.ico”
SAVING THE FILE AS Test.ico WITHOUT THE QUOTES WILL SAVE THE FILE AS A BITMAP.
^^^ Annonymous -
Nice work, worked out nice. Wanted to say thanks for ending my google searches.
Thanks man, I tired this and it worked!
wow..snarky much? It depends on what version of Windows you have on how / if ico saving is possible in paint
all it took were the quotes – Most helpful, Many thanks
Thank you so much!!!!!
it works But I still cant use it because “There is no Icons in ____.ico”
I have the same problem.
did you get it to work somehow?
did you get any comments about this issue?
with windows vista, this does not work – you can save an .ico file you save, windows tells you there are no icons in it.
Well none of those work – I tried both methods and all they do is save a blank file! Funny thing is when I use to use XP I never had a prob making folder icons at all – seems Vista has taken a step backwards instead of going forward as it should if it was progressive!!!! Grrrrrrrrr
OK – FINALLY got it to work – I did the Quotes – BUT I also set it to 256 colours – and then save as – it does tell u u will lose some colour – but just click OK – and it saves it WHEW! Thanks for the Quotes info – although I have also tried it without the quotes but kept it on the 256 colours and that works too. Shame it is not great looking though – XP had a great folder pic – looked smoother – I am going to check my XP on the old computer and see how I did those. But thankx for the MS Paint info that was great
I’m using MS Visual C#. The file gets saved as an icon. Fine. But when I try saving those icons to my applications, they don’t work.
What everyone else is saying is right. Even with using quotation marks, they still aren’t actual .ico files required by Visual Studio. I tried it with Visual Basic Express, Win 7 and it doesn’t work.
The reason you can still use them as folder icons is because folder icons don’t need to be in the .ico format, but I haven’t looked up to see what the requirements are.
Just because the extension says .ico does not mean its a .ico. Windows may interpret this as an icon file, and read it but other application may not.
Thanks man….quite helpful
im making a wiki but when i try to upload my .ico file it says File Extension “.ico” does not match the detected MIME type of the file (image/x-bmp)
can someone help?