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
    2015-02-07T01:44:46+00:00

    Yep, happening here too. I've noticed it the whole time I've been on Windows 8.1 (a little over a year) and had MS Office 2013. I was previously on Windows XP and never noticed this problem with MS Office 2010. So it must be primarily a Windows 7/8 issue.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-05-29T18:43:43+00:00

    Thought I'd chime in, if for no other reason than to date-stamp the fact that this still happens.  I've been using the same Windows 7 Pro 64-bit for over 2 years, same Office 2010 installed.  Nothing's changed but the monthly MS updates.  Out of the blue, this started happening to me last week - not only with MSOffice docs, but with folders that I modify something within or copy to.  It seems that any modification to any icon creates the move to the first open position on the grid.  As others here have noted, it does not have to do with auto-arrange which has always been, and remains, off.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-02-26T09:26:20+00:00

    I am having the same problem in Windows 8.1 with Windows Office 2013 

    I have noticed that if I do *not* save the Word 2013 document and quit the editor with the "X" in the upper right corner I get a prompt to save changes before exiting. If I save the document from this prompt the icon does *not* move on the desktop although a temp file does momentarily appear at the left most available location.

    I have not tried this with the other Windows office Document types yet.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-02-12T18:56:54+00:00

    I have this problem too and I don't believe it is an isolated problem but is widespread for Windows 7. I say this because I originally noticed this on my gf's laptop running Windows 7. And it is happening on my brand new HP computer too. I just downloaded Word 2013 and it is happening with the doc files of that program. It seems obvious to me that it is a Windows or Word bug. My autoarrange is off and it still happens. I never ever even changed that autoarrange setting, it was off by default on my new computer.

    Update: Today, 2014-02-13, I noticed that a docx Word file icon moved on the desktop. I was surprised because according to the most helpful comment here (at this time) said the problem was only .doc related. In this case I had clicked on the save button and I noticed that a temporary file was created on the desktop right when this happened.

    Update 2014-02-15: Whether "Allow background saves" is checked or not does not matter - both doc and docx files still move occasionally though I have not been able to figure out what to do to consistently cause this to happen (in order to isolate the problem). I've noticed the temporary file created is a ~WRLxxxxx file which according to one web page is a clipboard temporary file although the problem seems to occur even when I'm not using the clipboard.

    I didn't want to use shortcuts because I thought it would make it harder to back up the files, but found that if I had an extra folder on the desktop to hold the documents that it would not make backing up any harder. But I shouldn't have to have an extra folder on the desktop!

    System

    HP Z230 SFF computer

    Windows 7 64-bit

    Word 2013 32-bit (as recommended by Microsoft even for the 64-bit operating system)

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