MS Office desktop icons move after I modify and save them.

Anonymous
2010-02-25T23:36:10+00:00

My MS word and excel documents that I have on the upper right hand area of my desktop move after I modify and save them.  If I open them and don't save them nothing happens, but if I modify and save them, they move to the far left aligned with other icons.  They do not appear to be temp or hidden files.  They just move to the far left arranged with other icons.  I want to modify and save them and the files to stay in the upper right hand area...  Help???

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Anonymous
2010-02-26T17:12:02+00:00

Turn off the “Auto Arrange” option for icons on the desktop, and then place icons on the desktop where you want them.

To turnoff the “Auto Arrange” feature,

For windows 7:

Right click a blank area on the desktop and select View and uncheck Auto arrange icons.

For Windows XP:

Right-click a blank area on the desktop, and then click Arrange Icons. Click the command that indicates how you want to arrange the icons (by Name, by Type, and so on), uncheck Auto Arrange.

Niranjan I K Microsoft Answers Support Engineer.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-03-13T16:45:25+00:00

    I've had the same irrating issue ever since I got a new Windows 7 computer a year ago.  To get around it, I did the suggestion here, I moved the actual excel file to another folder and made a shortcut for the desktop to the file.  For some reason when you save the document it moves the actual document on the desktop but not the shortcut.  Still, BS while this may work why can't MS address the issue in the first place.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-09-11T11:56:04+00:00

    The problem is caused by the office2003 compatibility layer of office 2007, which behaves very badly with native office2k3 files. 

    There is no fix afaik, except using the xml (docx) format.

    The broken compat api will create a new 2k3 native document on save and rename the old 2k3 document to *.tmp::hidden, only to delete it when you close word or excel.

    Because it creates yet another 2k3 native document, the next time you save, the exact same thing happens.

    And thus of course, as it's a newly created file on your desktop, it ends up in the first available slot (or the second one if you have set "show hidden files and folders").

    It would be really easy to fix if we had the office source code, but it's in microsoft hands and they're probably happy with people moving to xml faster anyway (and you should, the old format is **** in comparison).

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-06-08T18:59:11+00:00

    It seems apparently true that if you make them all shortcuts, they won't move.  Is that considered the ONLY solution?  Really?

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-06-08T18:56:34+00:00

    I have the same Windows 7 problem.  I am MCSE and I know how to work on PCs.  None of the above things have worked and I have not seen any recent posts.  ANYONE have a clue as to how to fix this? My guess is that it will require editing the registry, which I have no problem doing, but........I would think and hope there is an easy fix for this.  Microsoft?????

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