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Lion Keeps Re-arranging my Folders

In Snow Leopard I used to make my folders simply snap to grid and I used to arrange them into an order that suited me.


In Lion when I do this, be it on the desktop, downloads folder or simply my user home, after a few times of accessing, the folders move randomly or get sorted by lion.


Any ideas why this is happeneing and how I can stop it from happening?

27, Mac OS X (10.7), 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD

Posted on Jul 27, 2011 6:53 AM

Reply
162 replies

Jul 28, 2011 7:44 PM in response to Eddie Prior1

Found this in another thread:


Open an ordinary Finder window, Go up to View > Show View Options > Arrange by: NONE


Worked for me!



I have it sent like that Sort by: snap to grid

arrange by: NONE


And after a while It will arrange by name on its own and I have to clean up by Kind to put it back to how i want it. Some folders are pain and clean up by kind is not waht i want and it will CLean up on its own to name. and not kep the way I had it befor

Aug 3, 2011 10:46 AM in response to Don Barth

I had the problem, sorted it in Finder>View>Show View Options and everything was OK.

But... take a long weekend away, back today, and the re-arranging is back too!


Another thread suggested trashing the Library>Preferences>com.apple.desktop.plist file.

I've not got one!

Spotlight (with everything selected) cant find it. It doesnt exist.

See alphabetical list in Library>PreferencesUser uploaded file

it should be there between CoreRAID and dockfixup.


Any suggestions?

And any suggestions why on an Apple-hosted discussion forum, someone from Apple cant just spare a couple of minutes to provide an answer?

Aug 3, 2011 12:41 PM in response to Eddie Prior1

Yes, you have such a plist. It's in Your Home Folder>Library>Preferences. This folder is now hidden in Lion - do a search on this forum to find out how to make it visible. BTW, a cluttered desktop, one with many icons/folders, can significantly slow down your machine. It's related to how your Mac works with desktop files. It is better to have only a few icons/folders on your desktop and place your files in them, nested as you wish.


Frank


edit: Apple doesn't live here - we're all just Mac users.

Aug 4, 2011 2:50 AM in response to Frank Miller2

Thanks Frank -

Much easier than all the Terminal and Apple Script stuff (I dont want to have to do all that - thats why I've been using Macs since 1992) is the Finder's [ Go > Go to Folder > ~/Library ] line - every hidden file is there to be seen!


Discarded the com.apple.desktop.plist and (for the moment) everything seems to be back to normal (It did lose my desktop picture setting but thats easy to replace)


While I'm working on various tasks I do like to have the various files on the desktop - maybe slows down the Mac a tad, but saves me more time searching, using and re-placing files that I need constantly. When finished, there're archived properly!


My point was that this an Apple-hosted site. It is inexcusable that when many people on many different threads are tearing their hair out seeking an answer to the same 'icon-rearrangement in Lion' problem, no-one from Apple software can comment. Don't tell me they dont read them! I know for a fact that they do.

Lion Keeps Re-arranging my Folders

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