Custom icons for items pinned to taskbar?

[HCHTech]

I KNOW I have done this in the past, but I just can't figure it out now and my google-fu is failing me. Maybe this functionality was removed in one of the updates?

In Windows 10 Pro (1909), I want to pin a shortcut to say, a PDF file that lives somewhere on the network to the taskbar and give it a custom icon. I can do this on the desktop, but not the taskbar. When I couldn't get it to work, I tried it with a Word document, an access database, and even a text file. All have the same problem/limitation.

If I put a shortcut to the file on the desktop first, then assign a custom icon on the properties sheet, the "Pin to taskbar" is missing from the right-click drop down menu for the shortcut, and if I just drag it to the taskbar, I get one option only, "Pin to Adobe Reader", which then puts in the Adobe icon. If I right-click on that I can see the file it is going to open on the top of the list, and I can then right-click on THAT entry and change it's icon, but the icon on the taskbar item is still the Adobe icon.

What am I missing?

 

[thecomputerguy]

I KNOW I have done this in the past, but I just can't figure it out now and my google-fu is failing me. Maybe this functionality was removed in one of the updates?

In Windows 10 Pro (1909), I want to pin a shortcut to say, a PDF file that lives somewhere on the network to the taskbar and give it a custom icon. I can do this on the desktop, but not the taskbar. When I couldn't get it to work, I tried it with a Word document, an access database, and even a text file. All have the same problem/limitation.

If I put a shortcut to the file on the desktop first, then assign a custom icon on the properties sheet, the "Pin to taskbar" is missing from the right-click drop down menu for the shortcut, and if I just drag it to the taskbar, I get one option only, "Pin to Adobe Reader", which then puts in the Adobe icon. If I right-click on that I can see the file it is going to open on the top of the list, and I can then right-click on THAT entry and change it's icon, but the icon on the taskbar item is still the Adobe icon.

What am I missing?

Sounds like something 1909 would happily get rid of just like the removed the ability to drag files to a shortcut that is a network location, or maybe it's a network map, one of the two I'm not sure

MS TAKES ALL THE FUN AWAY

 

[Moltuae]

Not sure if there's a simpler way but you can do it with a layout modification XML file and a group policy:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/configure-windows-10-taskbar
It's a bit of a faff for one-off stuff but useful if there are a number of machines or a domain environment.