Folder icons messed up

Question

Folder icons messed up

Can anyone tell me how to clean up icons properly? i.e. I have opened my Picture folder on my mac HD for example and although I usually use list view I do use icon view when I am looking for images, but a lot of the time all the icons are messed up. some times over the top of each other. When I try to "clean up" icons sometimes it just does not work. I have searched the forums using a few key words with no luck and if I searched until I found related topics to all of my mac problems would have no time for anything else!

Quad core, mac pro

Posted on Sep 30, 2010 3:03 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 1, 2017 9:19 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks Barney,

I did as you said but it did not work, I should tell you though, the pictures are on my second internal hard drive! Could you please give me instructions for fixing it?
Sorry, I'm not familiar with terminal.

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Answer 2

Sep 30, 2010 3:42 AM in response to Community User

Hi,

Open a Finder window. Select your Home folder in the Sidebar on the left. Now open the Library folder then the Preferences folder.

Move the com.apple.finder.plist file from the Preferences folder to the Trash.

Open a new Finder window. Hopefully you can use View / Clean up

Carolyn 🙂

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,584 points

Sep 30, 2010 3:56 AM in response to Community User

For that folder, I would suggest setting the View Options such that it keeps the files arranged in a particular way, such as Name or Date Modified. That way, they will always stay arranged cleanly.

I think Carolyn is on the right track, but when you say it does not work, can you describe what is not working? or how it is not working?

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Answer 4

Jul 1, 2017 9:19 PM in response to Barney-15E

Does not work as in the icons are still messed up with gaps between icons and some icons over the top of each other.

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Answer 5

Jul 1, 2017 9:19 PM in response to Community User

Ok, did it and it still does not work!

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Answer 6

Jul 1, 2017 9:19 PM in response to Community User

It does clean up if I then change the view type.

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Answer 7

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,584 points

Sep 30, 2010 3:01 PM in response to Community User

The .DS_Store file is probably messed up. There is probably a utility out there to get rid of it, but I just use Terminal.
Open Terminal, type cd Pictures <return>, then type rm .DS_Store <return>

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Answer 8

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,584 points

Oct 9, 2010 5:45 PM in response to Community User

The easiest way would be to type cd, leave a space after it, and then drag the folder you are having trouble with into the Terminal window. Hit return. If it doesn't report any issues, it should have changed to the directory you drug into the window. To confirm, you can use pwd which prints the working directory name on the screen. Confirm it is correct and then type this to remove the DS_store file:

rm .DS_Store

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