Changing the icons of default entities

Can we change the icons of default entities? Answer for this question is “No”. Don’t encourage anyone to do so. CRM 4.0 is not supporting this change. I tried to search web to find a way of doing it but failed to find a proper way. However, I managed to do a little experiment by myself to gather some information on this.

Actually entity icons for CRM 4.0 are stored in below location and they are in .GIF format.

Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb\_imgs\

Actually, I tried to play around with account entity. When I replace below image files, I could change the account icon in the application such as account grid and detail view of selected account.

ico_16_1 (size 16x16 pixels)
ico_16_1_d (size 16x16 pixels)
ico_18_1 (size 16x16 pixels)
ico_lrg_1 (size 66x48 pixels)

There is something tricky; this doesn’t change the icons (links) vertically lined in the left hand side navigation panel. You can see a long vertical stripe like images in below folder;

\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb\_imgs\imagestrips

Particularly, entity_imgs_1.gif (18x546) does the magic. I simply couldn’t realise how one static image could be used in CRM for different configurations of navigation. You will be amazed to see how smart CRM is using this one static strip for different arrangements of navigation panel. In order to make it sure, I did a little mark in the account icon in it and checked the outcome.

It changes the navigation pane.

I don’t know whether this gives a total solution, but this will help someone who wishes to try changing the icons of default entities. Anyway, I would say something for sure; creating icons for CRM is not a job of someone who knows “something” about imaging. It should be a job of professional, because you won’t be able to create a meaning full icon in just 16x16 pixels within a transparent background, unless you are really skilful.

FYI : Good site to search for icons for Dynamics CRM http://www.softicons.com