How to untether Expose' from mouse click?

Question

How to untether Expose' from mouse click?

I'm trying to disable Exposé or at least prevent it from intercepting the middle mouse button (scroll-wheel) click.

Whenever I click the scrollwheel Exposé shows me the desktop! I don't want it to do that.

I see nothing that pertains to that behavior in the System Preferences -> Mouse preference panel.

It's a big problem because I'm running AutoDesk CAD software in Parallells (virtualization software that runs on Mac OS X). AutoDesk Inventor uses "SHIFT + Scroll-wheel click" to manipulate a part orientation in 3D space. But I can't use that essential feature, because Exposé interferes.

I've looked at "Exposé & Spaces" preferences, and disabled *everything* in the Exposé configurable items.

There is a hyphen "-" in every single configurable section of the Exposé preferences, yet clicking the scroll wheel brings up Exposé.

It is very invasive behavior and more than a little inconvenient.

Any ideas on how can I fix this??

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Aug 18, 2011 12:50 PM

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Answer 1

captfred

Level 7

26,446 points

Aug 18, 2011 12:53 PM in response to It Could Be Perfect!

Select your options in System Preferences > Mouse.

Regards,

Captfred

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Answer 2

captfred

Level 7

26,446 points

Aug 18, 2011 1:08 PM in response to It Could Be Perfect!

Sorry, gave you the wrong screen.

System Preferences > Expose & Spaces > Expose tab > look at the shortcuts for Expose. If a mouse button is listed, set to "-".

Captfred

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Answer 3

Aug 18, 2011 1:18 PM in response to captfred

Which option would that be? In System Preferences -> Mouse, here are the entirety of the options presented:

Even under (unchecked) Screen Zoom Options, it says Zoom while Holding, and I can select Control, Option or Command, and only Control is selected. Where is anything that indicates Exposé? Note: The hyphen "-", by "Secondary Click" gets put there when I assign Spaces (not expose) to show me mywindows when I press CMD + right-click, and there's no way to configure *that* directly from the Mouse preferences.

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Answer 4

Aug 18, 2011 1:26 PM in response to captfred

Thanks but *everything* in Exposé & Spaces preferences is absolutely set to "-" and disabled, including all of the options that are used to indicate mouse activity. It still doesn't disable the middle scroll button from bringing up Exposé

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Answer 5

captfred

Level 7

26,446 points

Aug 18, 2011 1:40 PM in response to It Could Be Perfect!

Only thing I can think of is to set some value and turn it back off to cause an update of the pref file.

Also check in the Syspreference Pane under other to see if your mouse has it's own preference pane.

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Answer 6

Aug 18, 2011 7:56 PM in response to captfred

Looks like you may be right.

I believe Logitech Control Center still had residual software running on my system - but NO Logitech Preference Pane to indicate that.

I searched for Logitech in Spotlight, as years ago I had Logitech Mice and found an uninstaller.

Upon uninstalling that, the middle mouse button does not bring up Expose.

However what is odd is that on my Mac Pro I see a lot of assignable mouse buttons (33 mouse buttons!) in Expose and Spaces preferences, but on my wife's notebook, she only has one or two assignable mouse keys. So I don't know what it is that informed my Mac OS X system that I have so many mouse keys, but removing the Logitech software didn't revert it. I'd like to clean that up.

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