Desktop folders won't open on a double click

Hi,
New to MacBook and just can't figure out why my hard drive, alias etc won't open on a double click from the desktop.
Thanks

hi, rlb103 ,
welcome to the forum.
it might be that your finder got hung up. then indeed, restart the finder as described by kmac1036 .
However, the finder should never quit or hang. so, if it is indeed the finder, than this is not correct, and might need more attention.
There might be another thing: that the "double-clicking-speed" is wrongly adjusted. Got to "System Preferences" (under the apple menu), click "Trackpad", and adjust the "double-clicking-speed". Does it help?
if it doesn't help, please post back! with more info.
Thomas

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Some folders are not opening when I double-click.

Hi. I am currrently on an iMac, running OS 10.6.8. Last week random folders stopped opening when I double clicked them. I found it happening more when I started a new folder ( command n) and renamed it. Whenever I double click, the folder "whooshes" to the left never to be found. The folder stays on the desktop and does not open. The only way to get my items out is to throw the folder away, get an old folder, rename it and take the items out of the trash.
Any ideas as to what the issue may be? I've restarted the computer, shut down the computer, force quit the finder, relaunched the finder etc. I have done an "get info" and made sure everything is "read and write" as well. This is becoming a headache for about a week now.
Thanks for any help.

Try clearing your browser cache.
Tools > Clear Recent History... - hit Details and make sure only Cache is selected, then select Everything and hit the Clear Now button.

My screenshots won't open when I double-click them.

I've had this problem for the past 2 days. When I double click a screenshot in my desktop it won't open. I have to continue clicking it until it opens.
It's a MacBook Pro w/ Retina 13" - OS X MAVERICKS 10.9.3

It may be an issue with the trackpad. Consider a visit to an Apple store genius bar for a FREE evaluation.
Ciao,

Sublime Text 2 won't open files with double click

Hi, this is my first time asking for something.
Well, i've been using Scribes, but sometimes i need tabs in my text editor, so i installed Sublime Text 2.
The problem is that i can't open files with double click, i need to use "subl filename" and that it's not funny :S
If i double click a file ST2 opens, but with a tab named "file" and without content.
Is there a fix for that?
My Arch installation (if is neccesary):
Arch x86_64
Openbox (stand-alone)
PCManFM
P.D: sorry for my english D:

the reason seems to be a broken desktop file. `/usr/share/applications/sublime-text.desktop` says `Exec=subl %U`, but it should be `%f`. Also the Aur package does not provide a `subl` symlink so you should create one.

Adobe Photoshop 10 won't open to a double click.

When I changed from XP to W-7 not long ago, I was told that I'd have to upgrade from Adobe Elements to Elements 10. I did that, but have not been as pleased with Elements 10 as I was with the original Elements I got with my Olympus C-3020 camera several years ago. Now, my Adobe Photoshop 10 will not open to a double-click. How can I make it respond?

hi, rlb103 ,
welcome to the forum.
it might be that your finder got hung up. then indeed, restart the finder as described by kmac1036 .
However, the finder should never quit or hang. so, if it is indeed the finder, than this is not correct, and might need more attention.
There might be another thing: that the "double-clicking-speed" is wrongly adjusted. Got to "System Preferences" (under the apple menu), click "Trackpad", and adjust the "double-clicking-speed". Does it help?
if it doesn't help, please post back! with more info.
Thomas

Hard Drive icon missing - Desktop folders won't open - Need Help!

I need help! I have a 400 MHz PowerPC G4 with 768 MB SDRAM, no DVD drive - was running OS X 10.3.9 quite happily. We became owners of a new iPod Nano - so we had to upgrade to 10.4.
(I'm writing this on my 800 MHz PowerPC G4 with 768 MB SDRAM, (also no DVD drive) that I upgraded from OS X 10.3.9 to 10.4.11 without incident.)
Installed 10.4 using a FireWire Hard Drive - installed software updates to 10.4.11 - ran Disk Utility - ran MacJanitor - ran DoktorKleaner - everything was working well.
Rebooted and the Hard Drive Icon had disappeared from desktop. Folders on desktop have all lumped together in the top right hand corner of the screen, and refuse to open.
Only programs in the dock still work - clicking on the Finder icon only gives the option to hide. New Finder Window does not work. Programs can be found in Spotlight, but if they're not in the dock they won't open. Trash won't open or empty.
I attempted to reinstall Mac OS X using FireWire, but now the Hard Drive is full and is telling me it will erase and reinstall. I need to save files off this computer now (Sadly no backup exists) before my wife readies divorce papers.
I tried using FireWire Target Disk Mode to copy files - with the 400MHz as Target I just get a spinning Beach Ball any time I click on the Icon. After far too long it opened up an empty window.
With the 800MHz as the target, the 400MHz does not show it on the desktop, so I have no way of copying files to it.
Anyone have some advice that doesn't involve a time machine?

Whenever something starts going wrong with the computer I suggest you first boot from the installer disk, select language if applicable, choose utilities, run Disk Utility and verify (and repair if necessary) the drive. Then repair the permissions on your computer. You can also repair permissions from DU on your main drive while booted, but to properly verify and repair your drive you have to run it from a drive other than the boot drive.
[Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214]
[Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672]
[Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751]
From BDaqua (couldn't have said it better):
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk.
Then Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes."
A few questions:
Was this a retail installer disc that you used to do the upgrade?
How much free space do you have on the computer?
Did you use the [PPC Combo updater|http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateppc.html] to get to 10.4.11?
Did you do all these updates in one single session or restart and check your computer had accepted them okay between each update? It is critical to repair permissions before and after each update otherwise the installers won't install fully and you end up with a mix of versions.
You can set the Finder Preferences, general, to display a hard drive icon, but it sounds like your problems are going beyond that?
You can also try trashing your Users -> home folder -> Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.finder.plist file and see if that clears up the issue. That sets the Finder preferences and if it gets corrupted it will cause Finder problems.

Desktop folders won't open

None of my desktop folders will open. My Macintosh HD icon will also not open when it is on the desktop. The folders will open if I navigate to the Finder/File/Open menu. Similarly all the dock icons will open. The desktop location seems to be the problem. Any ideas?

I've never had that problem before. My first response would be to log out, and log back in. If that doesn't work, then you could try rebooting.
This may not do the trick, but it's worth a shot:
Go to your Home folder, then Library, then Caches. Select all of the files within that folder and press command + delete. Log out, and log back in. Empty the trash.

MS Office files won't open directly when double-clicked in OS 9

Hi, all.
On an upgraded Lombard, I have full legal versions of both MS Office 2001 on OS 9.2.2 and Office 2004 on OS X Panther 10.3.9. Opening Office files from within OS X works fine.
However, when booting into OS 9, I can't double-click to open any Office 2001 documents directly. What seems to happen is that Finder first locates the Office 2004 apps and then tells me that I need Mac OS X to be able to run those versions. I can drag the documents onto aliases of the appropriate Office applications, but that seems tedious. I haven't tried opening the files by starting Office 2001 from within OS X, because I have both native versions. Concerning possible application/extension conflicts, these are fresh installs of OS 9, OS X, and Office 2001 and 2004 (in that order) on a newly formatted hard drive.
What I've tried: I've fiddled with the File Exchange and Internet (Advanced tab) Control Panels, as well as downloading and configuring MuchoFileInfo, all to no avail. Going with my "finding one copy of Office first" theory (since in both versions each application is identically named and in nearly identical folder paths), I tried renaming the enclosing folders, hoping that re-alphabetizing would influence the search order. Still no luck. And of course I've tried resetting the PMU, zapping the PRAM, and rebuilding the Desktop. Of all these attempts, the only change I saw was that--after installing MuchoFileInfo--the documents properly displayed their Office 2001 icons, whereas before they only showed up as blank icons.
The closest thread I saw to my problem was archived as unanswered. (http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1434134&tstart=0)
Is there any way to get Finder 9 to recognize the files as what they are? Thanks in advance.

Hi, bobinski -
Is it better to keep them separate (for more reasons than this current problem)?
Some folk believe so. Reasons can include facilitating the re-install either OS, if needed, or to wipe just one away; and using disk repair utilities of various kinds and capabilities. One other effect resulting from partitioning - since each OS will be able to look in a smaller volume for a file it seeks, rather than looking in the entire drive, both OS's should run a bit snappier on a partitioned drive.
As far as how big each partition should be, well, that depends a bit on what use you put the machine to, how large the programs and the files you create with them are, etc.
In general, since OSX 10.3 and 10.4 do best when given 5GB of free space to use, allowing a minimum of about 8GB just for OSX is one figure; adding in additional space for programs and files depends upon what you have.
OS 9 does not need as much space - the OS itself needs less than 0.5GB, and its programs are probably smaller.
Given a hard drive size of 20GB, I would project a partitioning scheme of about 12 to 15GB for OSX, the rest for OS 9.
The first partition (the topmost one in the formatting utility's schematic) will be the fastest one. Which one that should be is your call, based on which you consider to be your prime OS now, and which you expect it will be in the future of that machine. It may not make any real difference, compared to similar effects between the first and last partitions on a multi-partition 120GB drive.
You can use either OS 9's Drive Setup or OSX's Disk Utility to do the partitioning. Some comments -
• If you use OSX's Disk Utility, as Denis stated be sure to select the option to install OS 9 drivers.
• Select Mac OS Extended as the format.
• Partitioning an unpartitioned drive will erase everything on it, so before proceeding with partitioning be sure you have backed up anything you do not want to lose.

Desk top folder won't open when I double-click on them

It just started happening, but now when I double-click on my desktop folders, they will not open. I end up having to right-click on them which can be very time consuming and frustrating, to say the least! I'm not sure if it is something I need to fix in settings or if it could be anything else...Help!

Stargazer,
Open System Preferences...>Accessibility>Mouse & Trackpad, and experiment with a different "Double-click speed:"

Using OS 10.9.5 and now dashboard won't open when I double click on it.

I have downloaded 10.9.5 for my OS and also, added my children as users with their own login to my MacBook Pro. Since then (two days ago), I am not able to access dashboard by double-clicking on it nor am I able to return to the screen I was on prior to dashboard by clicking on the lower right arrow.
Any suggestions, please?

Launch the Console application in any 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. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
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. Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take one of the actions that you're having trouble with. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them 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 which is irrelevant to 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.

Excel 365 still won't open files by double clicking!

I know this issue has been posted before but, unlike many, I've started with a clean slate - a brand new machine running Windows 7 Professional SP1. The only Office product I've installed is 365. Like most others, I can open Word and PowerPoint files by
double clicking but Excel refuses point blank to play ball. I get the "Problem sending data to the program" error.
I've tried the multitude of "fixes" spread around the forum and the net - to the extent that I can't remember which I've already done when I come across them - and nothing changes.
Surely (?) someone at Microsoft must have picked up that there is a real problem here, affecting a multitude of users. So why isn't there a unified fix available? Let me put that another way, does anyone know of a unified fix that's available all in one
place?

Hi,
I have definitely heard your frustration, we can try these methods to check if it works.
Is that error message “There was a problem sending the command to the program”? If so, we can
turn off the “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)” setting. Run “Fix it for Windows 7”.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/211494/en-au
On the other hand, maybe this problem is not in Excel, it is in Windows. We need to associate the file type with
corresponding program:
Right-click the Office       file that you want to open.
Select Open with,       then click Choose default program.
Select the appropriate       program to associate with the file, click to select the
Always use the       selected program to open this kind of file check box, and then click
OK.
Next, if the issue still exists, we can choose Run and enter Excel.exe /regserver .This will cause Excel to start up, re-register all of its registry keys, then quit. Now, try opening your Excel files.
Feel free to post back.

Neooffice won't open file by double clicking on finder

This just started recently. If I double click on a file and Neooffice is not already open, it will start up and open the file. If Neooffice is already open, it will do nothing. I can still open files through the File->Open menu (much less convenient). Only Neooffice appears to be affected. I have tried reinstalling Neooffice - no difference.
Any ideas? The system software has been updated much more recently than Neooffice.

One of the Macs in our office is having the same problem. Nothing changed on the computer...no upgrades to OS or NeoOffice. It just suddenly stopped opening double-clicked files - unless NeoOffice is NOT running. My office manager is close to tears having to quit NeoOffice before opening another file.
I will attempt to install the latest version of NeoOffice, but, like another poster here, I hate to do that because the last time I upgraded it caused me an extreme amount of trouble.
One thing I did try that did no good was running a permissions fix through Disk Utility. I'm stumped on what could possibly cause this to just suddenly happen.
Message was edited by: cvc1968.mac

My Firefox won't open when I double click it. 16.0.2

Okay, so I got this new computer (Gateway) on Friday, and Sunday Firefox decides to not work. I have been un-installing and re-installing Firefox. I have done this like 20 times. Didn't help. I also have tried pressing 'shift' while double clicking on the icon for Firefox, didn't work either!! I'm currently using Explorer (not crazy about.. but will have to deal until this gets solved). I have also tried this link:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html. Did not work either.
Please help me!!!

A possible cause is security software (firewall,anti-virus) that blocks or restricts Firefox or the plugin-container process without informing you, possibly after detecting changes (update) to the Firefox program (16.0.1 to 16.0.2).
Remove all rules for Firefox and the plugin-container from the permissions list in the firewall and let your firewall ask again for permission to get full unrestricted access to internet for Firefox and the plugin-container process and the updater process.
See:
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Server+not+found
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firewalls
See also:
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser_will_not_start_up
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Error_loading_websites

Windows explorer won't open files on double clicking

Just got Win7 installed on rMBP. Double clicking file basically puts you in renaming file, no matter how fast clicking. Anyone else seeing this?
Thanks,
Doug

Boilerplate-text:
Are Photoshop and OS fully updated and have you performed the usual trouble-shooting routines (trashing prefs by keeping command-alt-shift pressed while starting Photoshop, 3rd party plug-ins deactivation, system maintenance like repairing permissions, purging PRAM, font validation, etc.)?

Desktop folders won't open on a double click

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