Drag and Drop confirmation prompt? Accidentally moving files.

Anonymous
2011-03-25T15:44:05+00:00

Ever since upgrading to Windows 7, we have had a problem with people inadvertently moving folders by dragging and dropping when meaning to double click.  Is there a way to turn on a confirmation prompt ("are you sure you want to...") when dragging and dropping files/folders?  It seems that previous versions of Windows had this prompt, but it has since been removed.  This is happening in our office on at least a weekly basis, sometimes daily, and we have to spend time searching for the moved folder.  If MS is unable to help, is there software that we can purchase to accomplish this?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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@CmdrKeene 90,631 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2011-03-25T16:29:55+00:00

Windows 7 made no changes: there has never been a confirmation prompt like you describe.

One workaround is to increase the distance you must move the pointer before it triggers a drag.  Under the following registry key, you'll see DragHeight and DragWidth, which define the number of pixels the mouse must move before the drag is initiated:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT\USER\Control Panel\Desktop

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-12-11T11:18:37+00:00

    In Windows 7 under Mouse settings I checked the box "Turn on ClickLock." This causes a box to pop up "Move to folder name" and the user will have to click a folder to move it or not. I will change this on several computers to see if this helps or hinders users.

    This makes things worse.  The tiny box that pops up comes when you drag a folder regardless of the ClickLock settings.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-12-11T12:13:08+00:00

    http://kingsmarket.org/StopDragNDrop.html

    Doesn't work either. I made the edits and rebooted and there's no difference when left-click and dragging.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-02-26T17:48:01+00:00

    That fix worked with windows 2000 back when internet explorer policy applied to windows explorer as well.  In their infinite wisdom Microsoft stopped that from happening in xp but never implemented any new policy for explorer to duplicate the setting.  We have been waiting 11 years now for Microsoft to get their act together and do something but as we saw by the initial reply to this thread they are in denial that it ever existed in the first place.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-03-06T15:12:27+00:00

    Ever since upgrading to Windows 7, we have had a problem with people inadvertently moving folders by dragging and dropping when meaning to double click.  Is there a way to turn on a confirmation prompt ("are you sure you want to...") when dragging and dropping files/folders?  It seems that previous versions of Windows had this prompt, but it has since been removed.  This is happening in our office on at least a weekly basis, sometimes daily, and we have to spend time searching for the moved folder.  If MS is unable to help, is there software that we can purchase to accomplish this? 

    I was so hoping there would be a simple solution to this.   I do remember being prompted in the past, but I can't remember if it was through our Netware server way back in the day. 

    Unfortunately, my company also suffers from co-workers with itchy trigger fingers.  Further complicating matters is that any group policy editing that may exist would have to be pushed by a global IT change.  This probably wouldn't be feasable. 

    That stated I've resorted to command prompt to do the work for me.  Many of you may know this, but it may help some others.

    At a command prompt I navigate to the shared drive and do a wild card directory listing for the folder and tell the DIR command to only give the basics ( /b ) and to search sub directories ( /s ).

    Example,  my co-worker couldn't find a folder called "Customer Requests 2012".   There were folders for 2010, 2011, 2013, but 2012 was gone.   I typed the following search on our "S:"

    DIR *Customer*Req*20* /b /s

    The folder was found inside another folder starting with "C".  Like I mentioned, a lot of you may know this, but perhaps it will help others.

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