Drag and drop in finder stops working

Simply restart the Finder First, which is quite easy:

1. Hit Command+Option+Escape to bring up the “Force Quit” menu

2. Choose “Finder” from the list and click on ‘Relaunch’ to quit and re-open the Finder app

3. Close the Force Quit menu

Not much better than logout/login but here's what I got:

The workaround is:

1. Launch

   Activity Monitor

2. Find

   pboard

   process and quit the process.
3. Restart applications where you would like to copy from or paste into.
4. Relaunch (through Option-Command-Escape) Finder to fix dragging and dropping.

Your MacBook Pro is not a server, and really does not need to run for days without a reboot/shutdown sequence. I shut my Mac down each night before I retire, and it is powered on again first thing in the morning. I have absolutely no issues with El Capitan, Finder, or third-party applications.

Whether an application is drag/drop aware depends on the original design by the developer, and is not available in all applications.

I tried shutting down, signing out/in, etc. but nothing helped. I then tried pressing Command, then Option, then Control, and different combinations of those while dragging with the trackpad. Finally happened upon Command-Control-drag (have to hold down C-C first, then select the file to drag it). Weird, and not what anyone else recommended, but it worked!

I have this problem too! When I use any application, dragging any window, whether its files or applications, sometimes it randomly drops. At first I thought it was my mouse, So I changed that and I still have the problem. It's quite annoying because when moving stuff around, it drops it wherever it wants. I tried to close and relaunch finder too. I've restarted the computer and that doesn't work either. Even when the computer has been off for days, it still has the issues on fresh start up. Once I pick up any icon or move anything, it tends to drop randomly within 5 seconds of moving it around.

Currently running 10.12.6 on a Mac Pro (Mid 2010) 2 x 2.4 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon, 32 GB 1055 MHZ DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB x 2.

Please help me fix, it didn't do this before.

I have never experienced any of those issues, nor heard of them on these forums.

Given that, I would suspect some third-party system modification is causing the problem. However, I have no idea what that might be.

When you notice the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

Launch the Console application in any one of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.

VikingOSX,

I never power down my Macs. They typically only get rebooted when there is an update/upgrade which requires it. I don't have any issues allowing them to run 24/7.

Now every Windows work laptop I have ever used never seems to work appropriately without rebooting every day.

The beginning of the log extract should coincide as closely as possiible with the beginning of the episode, whenever that was. This is just one step in trying to solve the problem, not necessarily the only one.

Re: this message:

CFPasteboardRef CFPasteboardCreate(CFAllocatorRef, CFStringRef) : Lock timeout

A lock timeout occurs when two processes or threads try to access the same resource simultaneously but don't handle all the possible outcomes correctly and end up deadlocked with each waiting for the other to complete before proceeding.

There is an open bug with no resolution connected with this message:

http://openradar.appspot.com/25691051

You might be able to hunt down the app that is triggering the issue so you can avoid using it until the issue is resolved. I would suspect third-party 'clip-board helper' extension(s) first. Next, Automator scripts that access the clipboard. The fact that your Automator scripts are locking up and need you to login/out from time to time is not a good sign. If you can figure out which one is responsible converting it to AppleScript might help or it might be a waste of time.

C.