"Places" links in Finder Sidebar have corrupted, can't open, can't remove

Hi,

I had the same problem: clicking on the places link on the sidebar wouldn't take me to the folder location, but traversing the hierarchy would work. I couldn't simply drag the link to the trash. Erasing the finder and sidebar plist followed by PRAM reset did not work either.

What warked for me was to drag the places link away while pressing the command key. That removed the link and I was able to make a new one.

Cheers,

Simone

Holding down command and dragging the items out of the sidebar worked! Way easier than any other suggestions I had seen.

That worked for me too! Thanks

I had a similar problem with my sidebar in finder; the icon of old, nonexistent folder could not be deleted. I was able to drag it out, even as far as the Trash, but it always snapped right back again!

My solution was to create a new folder with the identical name as the problematic one. I drug the new folder to the sidebar and "the two became as one." That solved the issue (probably related to a broken alias) and I was finally able to delete it.

Dragging to the Desktop while holding the Command key worked for me too in 10.6.7. Definitely easier.

That's the best solution for the problem! Thumbs up! ;-)

Life saver! Thanks! I was just about to do the PRAM trick... Thanks!

That was the one thing out of all the suggestions that actually worked for me!! Thank you so much !!

That totally worked, thanks - e.g. dragging and holding the command key (even though I couldn't select it)

(a newbie Mac user perplexed by not being able to find setting files)

Hi All,

I had the same problem after migrating to a new mac--but could not drag the dead files to the trash.

The simplest thing occurred to me and it worked:

Select the dead Place while holding down the option and command button and drag it out.

It will disappear in a cloud of smoke and you can set up new ones.

Sophie

Fine, sophie; but the option key is surplus to requirements - you only need to hold Cmd.

try this

go to the folder

/Users/username/Library/Preferences

and open the file

com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

here you can edit/delete what appears in the sidebar directly

reboot to make the changes apear

Hi,

This was really a better solution. My small trick didn't 'hold'. The Sidebar Places kept getting corrupted. This seems to be working.

Thank you aquagremlin.

sophie

This didn't work for me. Right-clicking only gave me a submenu to open sidebar preferences but didn't allow me to drag the item into the trash. But what did work was command-clicking the item and dragging it out of the sidebar where it went *poof* and disappeared.