Can't move shortcut icons on my desktop to different locations on the desktop

Anonymous

I cannot move my desktop shortcut icons around on my desktop. Think it has something to do with the auto-allign feature - how do I fix this ?

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Ramesh 181.2K Volunteer Moderator

Right-click desktop, click View, and uncheck Auto arrange icons.

Ramesh Srinivasan | The Winhelponline Blog

Microsoft MVP, Windows Desktop Experience

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136 additional answers

Anonymous

2012-04-07T13:39:07+00:00

Me too. ESC x 3 does the trick. Seems the ESC key a number of odd (not even) times jams something in explorer. Thanks.

Windows 7 ultimate x64
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Anonymous

2012-01-17T23:09:05+00:00

I was having exactly the same problem; on the desktop I ended up hitting escape a few times and I was able to move my icons again.

As a note this was occurring everywhere in Explorer as I couldn't move icons from one folder to another either.

Was going crazy as I'd never experienced this before. Checked all over the place. Read your

post and thought "This can't work!"

Tried it and it worked great! Unbelieveable! Happy New Year...
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Anonymous

2011-12-22T18:46:36+00:00

I was having exactly the same problem; on the desktop I ended up hitting escape a few times and I was able to move my icons again.

As a note this was occurring everywhere in Explorer as I couldn't move icons from one folder to another either.
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Anonymous

2010-08-31T17:01:03+00:00

Auto arrange icons is unchecked - yet I still have the problem
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