Although file association works properly and MS Office files are opened accordingly when I double click on them, the Lister display shows generic icons for them. I am running Windows 8 and this problem has come up unexpectedly. How may this be fixed?
You could give ShellExView a try, see for example this post:
I have the same problem in Windows Explorer. I'll probably have to reinstall/repair MS Office.
I repaired the MS Office application suite, but there was no change.
I then rebuilt the icon cache and now the icons are back to normal.
Thanks for your advice.