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In my work all coding can be done in VBA only, hence, all of our tools (dbase queries, data processing, cash overviews, etc) are written as XLSM files.

At the moment, I have approximately 20 different tools and once I open up some of them, it takes some time to search for the specific tool in the taskbar as they all show up as (stacked) Excel icons. So my goal is to be able to assign different icons to different XLSM tools so that they appear as separate/different icons in the taskbar.

Is this possible? I'm on Windows 7 x64 with Office 2010.

EDIT: I have theoretically figured a way: Make a copy of Excel.exe to, say Excel_.exe, change the icon of this Excel_.exe, thenlaunch one tool in this copy of the Excel binary. The first problem with this approach is that upon trying to launch Excel_.exe I get an error about a missing DLL file (MSVCR90.dll), which naturally does not occur with the original Excel.exe - does anybody have a clue why this happens?

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    There may be an advanced way of doing this but OOB I believe there's no way to change the icon. However, if you're doing everything in Excel, could you create a master book with buttons pointed to each book, and give each book a button to go back to the master book?
    – CLockeWork
    Jul 7, 2014 at 8:10
  • @CLockeWork: Thanks for a suggestion. I will give it a thorough thought! One thing I figured out, though, is that even if I managed to give the excel file a different icon based on the file's name, Windows does not decide whether to stack applications under one icon based on the file icon, but based on the app name - all the tools would still stack under one Excel icon in the taskbar, thus not solving my problem. Jul 7, 2014 at 11:18
  • This probably would help you. Try to set the Icon as soon the workbook is loaded using Workbook_Open. Dec 18, 2014 at 12:44
  • @jjk_charles: Hello, thanks a lot for the recommendation. However, this approach and its variants only changes the icon on the window, not in the taskbar. Dec 29, 2014 at 13:19
  • @Daniel Bencik did you try using a 32 pixel icon for ICON_BIG as mentioned in the answer? Dec 29, 2014 at 15:16

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To separate the buttons in the taskbar, right click on the takbar and select "taskbar properties". A window called "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" will appear. In the drop down list "taskbar buttons", select "Never combine" and click on OK.

If you do this, the buttons will buttons will be separated but still have the same icon. If you really want them to have different icons, you can open some in Excel Online. To do this, open OneDrive, create an account (or log in if you already have one), drag the excel file into the window and click on it to open it in Excel Online. Excel Online doesn't support all functionalities, so only edit what's simplest with it. Since Excel Online is online and therefore uses a browser, it will have your browser's icon in the task bar.

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  • Thanks for the suggestion. For my application this is not a solution (lots of vba/c# code called from the excel file), however others may find this useful. Oct 25, 2015 at 15:51

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