STILL NO HELP!!!! Cannot move icons or folders

WOW! Very simple fix.

Although I had to go through many other involved efforts that were suggested,

this one was all it took.

I recently was on a file cleaning frenzy and remember deleting the "tmp" folder.

As "jdmojorisin" suggested,

1. Went to "Macintosh HD" folder (from desktop menu bar "Go" - "Computer" - "Macin HD" )

2. Went to action menue (gear looking drop down menue)

3. Selected "New Folder"

4. Named new folder "tmp"

5. Rebooted (restart)

Problem solved!

Thank you!!!

Thank you .. but no help can't create new folder in macintosh HD :-(

I used a combination of things here that lead me to these steps to solve this aggrivating issue.

1. Open up your Mac HD. If you don't know how (I didn't) open up Finder, go up to the tool bar at the top of your screen, click GO then click Computer. If your files are hidden you will have to go to the next step. Otherwise skip to #3

2. If your files are hidden you're going to have to un-hide them.

Open Terminal (you can search for it in spotlight) and then type in:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES <- Make sure you use all the capitals and spaces here (there is no space at the end of the sentance) and then press enter

Then type in: killall Finder

Then press Enter.

This will close all finder windows. You can now close Terminal if you want.

3. Go back to your Hard Drive and you'll have to do the following:

"I would try trashing the Finder's preferences file, "com.apple.finder.plist".

Your Spotlight may not have ever indexed this kind of system file, so you'll probably have to navigate to it manually. If you only have this problem with one user account, just trash that user's preference file, probably in the /Users/"YourName"/Library/Preferencesfolder, substituting "YourName" for your short user name.

While you're at it, trash your sidebar preferences file too, "com.apple.sidebarlists.plist"

It should be in the same folder.

If the problem appears to be system wide, try trashing any files by the same name from the system's local library folder: /System/Library/Preferences"

4. Reboot your computer. This solved my problem. Hope this helps!

Hi KasI

I read you post as i'm having the same problem. With my trash folder as well i have folders in the trash i want move back on to my desktop the won't move. every folder is locked the weird thing is if i right click on the selected file i can move things to trash. I'm not sure if this is related but all my software programs ie indesign, photoshop, illustrator and safari crash once they are open. Any Help would be appreciated

Regards

Designerstar

This worked for me:

1. Right click on the desktop

2. Select Clean Up

and everything worked again

I ran into this problem with Mavericks 10.9.2 -- when attempting to 'clean up the desktop'/put files & folders away where they belong, the ol GhostBusters 'NO' symbol (circle with a line through it) would appear over the file/folder as it's dragged to new location, only to have file/folder spring back to original desktop position once released.

This solved the problem for me:

From FINDER menubar, select 'GO' to get dropdown menu > hold down 'OPTION' KEY until LIBRARY pops up in the middle of the dropdown menu & you can click it with mouse pointer.

Go to LIBRARY > PREFERENCES > then find the '. . . DESKTOP.plist' file. Select it & drag it to the trash, then RESTART computer. This allowed me to move files/folders off the desktop, but it required keying-in the administrator password for the computer to finalize each & every move !!!

So I went back in to LIBRARY > PREFERENCES > located the '. . . FINDER.plist' file & tossed it in the trash. RESTART computer, no more authentication required & am able to move files/folders off desktop as usual.

Dump both .plist files & restart once should work fine too.

Good luck.

I was having the same problem.. my new iMac was doing fine for 3 weeks then today my folders and icons stopped moving... first I threw away the finder preferences then the sidebar preferences .. rebooted and nothing happened..so I tried throwing away the doc preferences and rebooted.. and yahoo! problem solved!

This worked perfectly and much thanks. I do not know why it happened although it was after doing the latest greatest upgrade 10.10.1 Yosemite

Totally strange I saved the two files in a separate folder in case I ever "need" them.

again much thanks!

FOUND THE SOLUTION!!simple:) USE OPTION KEY!

http://inner.geek.nz/archives/2011/08/10/howto-fix-file-sorting-in-finders-colum n-view-on-mac-os-x-lion/

Try this

Click on the Desktop, press COMMAND-J to open the view dialog. Set the Sort by: dropdown menu or None.

i've figured different methods working to resolve the issue of "cannot move (drag) folders or files on desktop".

solution1: delete 3 files from /Library/Preferences and reboot.

(com.apple.desktop.plist, com.apple.finder.plist, com.apple.sidebarlists.plist). To do that, open any finder window, then press "alt" and "Go" on menubar on the top. You will see Library. Go there and find Preference folder. Delete. Reboot.

solution2: create "tmp" folder in root directory of your logical volume if missing. Reboot

-your root directory is basically c:\ (whatever is your primary partition)

-please check if the "tmp" shortcut is already there (to do that, open terminal and past this

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES) then navigate to c:\

-if the tmp is not there, create and reboot.

-if the tmp is there as a shortcut or folder, don't mess around.

solution3: "release" the desktop.

-goto terminal, type sude chflags -R nouchg

-drag and drop your "Dekstop" folder. (if you can't find yr desktop folder, click anywhere on desktop, click "Go" and choose "Enclosing folder"

solution4: remove ".DS_Store" invisible file from desktop.

-open terminal and paste defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

-try to delete .DS_Store file (not always possible)

as for me, solution No.3 worked fine. rest did not work out.