Migration Gotcha – app icons

When you use database attach to migrate from MOSS 2007 to SP 2010 and then to SP 2013, you will find that everything looks fine except when go to Site Contents page, the app icons will look like a mix of 2007 and 2013 versions. This is entirely normal and is expected behavior.

Remember that  the migrated content is based on the list templates that were used when the items were initially created. So anything upgraded will normally show the old icons to repesent the apps as they are still using the old list templates.

The icons that SharePoint uses are generated when a colour theme is applied to a site. Items such as an edit icon will be controlled by a particular colour reference in the spcolor file so best you should do is retheme them.

Although you can find the icons in \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\IMAGES you really don’t want to mess about with native stuff as these icons appear in different literature, books and help guides.  So you will need to educate users to ensure they don’t use these App types to create new list types, but also to explain the differences between the new icons, and the old ones as part of service on-boarding.