Can't drag files in mountain lion.

Paul.Urmston wrote:

Hi there... I am in serious need of help.

I clean installed Mountain Lion no problems, everything seems to be a little quicker even... .a bonus.

But then I stumbled across something.

I am unable to move or drag files around.

Let's say I have a file jpg in the desktop, and I want to move it to the pictures folder... Normally I would just hold down the trackpad, and physically move it in to the open pictures finder... but it just will not move. I can select it, open it, rename it, everything... but I just cannot drag anything anywhere.

Lets say the jpg on my desktop needs work and I want to open it in Photoshop. I have the Photoshop icon in my Dock, and for years have simply dragged whatever jpg onto the PHotoshop icon in the Dock to open it.. .but now I can't.

At the moment I am copy/pasting everything, which is time consuming and sooo annoying you have no idea.

I just wanted to move a AVI from my downloads to the desktop. I had to copy, paste, then delete from downloads... ***?!?!

Am I the only one experiencing this problem??

Please let me know.

Try the Mountain Lion forums.

Cheers

Pete

Had the same thing happen after I installed Mountain Lion on a 13" Macbook Pro (2009ish) I solved the problem by going to HD/Library/Caches and deleting all of the files in the Caches folder. Then I rebooted, and emptied the trash. Seemed to solve the problem.

Hope that helps you too.

quick fix this :

- Go to system preferences

- click accessibility

- select mouse&trackpad

- click trackpad options...

- and check the 'enable dragging

hope solve your problem

Thanks, Paul.Urmston -

Been trying all kinds of crazy attempts to solve the no drag&drop to the Desktop problem - rebuilt permissions, trashing prefs, changing the Accessibility settings (I am in Mountain Lion). But a simple restart and the problem has gone away.

Much appreciated!

Jeff Seaver

www.seaver.com

I have exactly the same problem on Mountain Lion- I go to drag files from the finder to another finder folder or the desktop and when I go to release the mouse button the file stays in a "hover" state, as if I hadn't released the mouse. It then follows my mouse cursor around forever. Very frustrating.

I have rebooted several times - any ideas?

I had the same issue with files and emails when dragging them to move on my Macbook Pro late 2009 with Mountain Lion, the mouse cursor showed the files but everything froze and I could not do anything to remove the mouse indicator to normal plus the move would not occur. To solve that situation I had to force quit finder.

I tried all trics that I read like trashing cashes from library and so on. I did not work at all, also reboot did not work.

Then I reset PRAM and just before that I repaired disk permissions. Now it works as it should work and no hangups and balls of death anymore.

On another Macbook Pro 2010 model the issue is not there at all.

I've got a mid-2009 15" MBP (upgraded with an SSD & replaced optical drive with 1TB drive) - Installed Mountain Lion and when starting the computer, it works fine, no problems dragging files. After an hour or so, I can't drag any files around (resorting to copy/paste) nor can I drag a movie or song into iTunes.

I've tried "deleting all of the files in the Caches," as well as,"reset[ting] PRAM and just before that I repaired disk permissions," to no avail. Seems that the only thing to work is to reboot it and wait until it acts up again or force quitting Finder. When Finder restarts it seems to work for awhile (which is probably quicker than rebooting).

In any case, it'd be nice to have a definitive fix. I hope someone figures it out.

Dear all, I had hoped that after the first patch of Mountain Lion my dragging files issue would be solved.

Not true !

So only resetting PRAM works for me and then don't restart or shut down the macbook otherwise the issue comes back again, only closing lid avoids getting the same dragging issue again.

To be honest this Mountain Lion is for me the worst OSX version since I started with mac's !

It's getting anoying I can't fix the problem anymore it stays in continously now, anyone has an idea or tip !

I've got this same problem starting today. Rebooted and repaired permissions a couple of times, but still not working.

Solved it !

But it was painfull taking lot's of time. I did three times a clean OSX 10.8.1 reinstall (cmd-R-PowerOn).

First one with full backup of a timemachine backup excl OSX files - problem came back.

Second clean install again and a backup with only Applications and User files - problem came back.

So then a third one, and just reinstall all my applications one by one clean (I am sure I will miss some coming days) and only put back data files manually.

Each time a clean install did not bring back the dragging issue (and by default in Preferences - Accessibilty, Dragging is off ! by the way)

So I guess by now that it is some application that brings in this irritant issue.

Don't if this will help anybody but my pain is over, half of a free day lost ! But there is a cure !

I am finding that this only happens when I am connected to my Apple display (MacBook Pro 15" Late 2008).

I was wrong. It is happening all the time nowand the only solution for me is to Force Quit.