Files rearrange themselves

How can I stop individual files in my folders from rearranging themselve for no reason?

Open the Folder and then select Show View Options, in that menu set Arrange by and Sort by to the way you want to see them then close the panel.

Similar Messages

Safari 5 Top Sites Rearranging Themselves after Quitting

Hello, all.
The thread title sort of says it all. Since upgrading to 10.6.4 and/or Safari 5, my Top Sites will rearrange themselves every time I restart Safari. Specifically, two sites are removed from Top Sites and I have to manually add them again.
Has anyone else had this problem? Any ideas on fixing it?

Greetings,
Have you tried this:
Quit Safari if it's running and open System Preferences>Network>TCP/IP.
In the DNS Server window, make sure IPv6 is turned off, and enter these two DNS servers to replace the ones you currently have:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
click Apply Now and quit System Preferences.
Next, do these things in order:
1. Go to Home/Library/Cookies and delete the Cookies.plist file.
2. Go to Home/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari and delete the contents of that folder.
3. Go to Home/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Web Page Previews and delete the contents of that folder.
4. If you don't want to use the Top Sites feature, open Terminal and paste in this command:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy -int 2
5. Go to Home/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari and delete the contents of that folder.
6. Go to Home/Library/Caches/Safari and delete the contents of that folder.
7. Go to Home/Library/Safari and delete these files (if you have them):
Downloads.plist
History.plist
Form Values
LastSession.plist
WebpageIcons.db
Then repair permissions and restart Safari and see if the problem remains.

Icons rearrange themselves!

Hi,
In my applications folder, I keep it in the icon view mode, and I arrange them with all Apple programs on the left side, and all my sharewares, etc. on the right side. This has worked well for a few years . . . when all of a sudden, in Snow Leopard, every few hours, as I look in the Applications folder - OMG! they've all rearranged themselves alphabetically ??
I'll spend 10 minutes rearranging them back to how I like them - they'll stay that way for a day? or an hour, it changes, and then when I look in the Applications folder again - they did it again! Rearranged themselves!!
Anyone know what's going on?
All maintenence things are done on my computer - latest in upgrades, etc!
Thanks,
Larry

Larry Cohen1 wrote:
But, just asking, do you know if I did your idea and deleted the main plist - would that have effected ALL my folders, which I suspect it would?
Normally when you delete a plist file associated with any application, that application will usually behave as if it's never been used that that particular user before.
There are some exceptions. For example, you can create a custom background image for each folder. Those choices are stored with the folder, not the plist file. This is why when you download applications such as Firefox and open the installer, you see a Finder folder that has a background with icon placements and background "art" (in the case of Firefox the "art" is really a diagram trying to illustrate to the user that they should drag the application icon to their "Applications" folder) even though you have never opened the folder before.
Since there's no hard rule as to what is stored in an application's "plist" file, you can never be sure what will happen when you get rid of the old plist file. This is why I generally don't just delete the file. I typically either drag to desktop or drag to trash (but don't empty trash). That way if the removal had any undesired side-effects I can always drag the original plist file back.
Glad to hear it's fixed!

Stacks that randomly rearrange themselves!?

I've been getting jiggy with smart folders, creating all kinds of wonderous filtrations, however, I'm beginning to notice some of my stacks of images randomly reversing, or 'auto-rearranging' themselves. It becomes apparent when you go to back to admire/congratulate yourself upon a new smart folder, then realise that the image count isn't the same as it was a minute ago before you went tweaking other folders/metadata, whatever. Only by toggling the Ignore Stack option does it reveal the culprit stacks.
My only fix for this at the moment, is to revisit the appropriate project, open all stacks, the painfully trawl through each to see which one has been swapped, then re-promoting the pick (apple-\). This is driving me nuts!
This doesn't happen to all stacks, and appears to completely turn their original ordering on its head. My stacks invariably contain mixtures of master CR2s (mainly referenced), auto-exported/reimported .PSDs, plus any version spin-offs that occurred. Only the pick is generally star-rated. (which is the main method I'm using to filter the importance of the picks in my new smart folders).
Am I going loopy, or has anyone else noticed this? I perhaps am not using stacks as purely as I ought, but I've been using Aperture long enough to know what I'm doing. Could be gigo, but I can't see it.
...or maybe it's just been a long day :-|
Anyone?
- Kevin

No, I'm not using a pen tool, just the mouse. I too notice that Aperture cannot handle fast selections, but I expect this is more a problem with my underpowered/outdated (Ap 1.5 +G5 dual 1.8ghz, 3gb, XT800XT GA ...not!) system spec. It's not as if I have a whole load of memory-intensive apps. running in the background either.
Perhaps as you say, my problem occurs when I am being too fast for my machine to keep up (there's a first!), although there is consistency in as much as each of my erroneous stacks end up with my pick being placed at the bottom i.e. last.
I've been noticing some other strange selection behaviors of late too, such as unreliable multi-selects in Light Tables. I select, say 2 or 3 images that I wish to move as a group, only to find that when I begin to drag then, a whole load more (though not all) move with them, thus completely wrecking my layout (designing slideshow running orders). I'd throw my machine out of the window at this point if only I could afford to buy a new one I often find I need to be really slow and deliberate when selecting/opening and closing stacks etc. in order to be happy that the Aperture has understood my intention.
Is this lack of sys. memory, too slow a processor? Anyone??
Anyway, back to the main subject. I wish I knew what goes on inside my computer when I present it with too much to think about, how can it decide to reverse hierarchies in its panic? This one defies my logic, but I'm still hoping someone out there has suggestions?
Please will some one reassure me that if I upgrade to V2, that these problems won't be exacerbated!!?
Kevin

Files renaming themselves

I have had on ongoing problem with files renaming themselves most often with a numeric file name. It has happened with Quark , Illustrator and Photoshop files. There is no pattern... it happens randomly at different times. File names are less than 31 characters. Sometimes when I have linked files in Quark from Photoshop, the linked names willl change but not neccessarily the file name itself on the hard drive. Sometimes both names change, sometimes only the linked name will change in the usage box in Quark, sometimes the file will rename itself on the hard drive. For instance, a file recently named SPI6007_past_presentadult.qxd has renamed itself on my hard drive as QXP-1055969291.qxp In this case, it has created another file and did not replace the original. This has been an ongoing issue and I have worked at several agencies with several different computers and several different Mac Operating Systems. Any help is much appreciated. Out IT guys are stumped.

Gary,
I have had this problem over our network. I transfered a folder with a Quark file and about 50 pieces of art. Most of the art had changed to numbers. I would have been sunk if it were not for the folder still on the server. Still had a lot of changing to do. Other computers on network have not been affected--yet. I have had problems with Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator files changing from app files to Unix files. I have searched the discussion pages and have not found a beneficial solution. One thing I have done is to install Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator on our server. This forces the system to recognize the icons and . I am telling our artists to let the program add the extension and for them not to delete it. This will solve the problem from this point on. We still have lots of art that do not have extensions and will cause problems. One site that was somewhat helpful that I would recommend is www.thexlab.com. You will find some information there about resetting launch services. Good luck.

Podcasts rearrange themselves?

I have iOS 8.1.2 and for some reason, with the native Podcast app, my podcasts seem to rearrange themselves.
For a good few months, I listened to the same handful of podcasts, no issues. Recently, I subscribed to a couple more, and now whenever I go back into the app or if it refreshes, it puts those new podcasts at the top. I have put them in different spots multiple times (I prefer to have them arranged by frequency of episode publication), but they always go back to the top. I should add, they are not alphabetizing, and the podcasts I have been listening to for months stay in the order I've always had them.
Anyone know how to fix this? It is driving me crazy and I kind of want to unsubscribe just so I don't have to deal with it anymore.

Hi olwags,
Happy New Year! The resource below will show you how to adjust the settings for your podcast subscriptions and organize your podcasts using the My Stations feature. Take a look at these options and see if resolves your issue of podcasts rearranging themselves.
Podcasts app for iOS: Managing subscriptions - Apple Support
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202949
Settings
There are two places you can change subscription settings for your podcasts.
Default settings: From your Home screen, tap Settings and then Podcasts. These settings are shared by all of your podcast subscriptions. These are known as default podcast settings.
Refresh Every: You can choose how often your iOS device checks for new episodes to your subscriptions. It's set to check every six hours by default.
Limit Episodes: You can pick how many episodes you see for subscriptions.
Download Episodes: The latest episodes of your podcasts will download automatically if your iOS device is connected to Wi-Fi.
Delete Played Episodes: If this is turned on, episodes will delete 24 hours after you finish playing them.
Use Cellular Data: If your iOS device has a cellular connection, you can allow downloads to use cellular data when Wi-Fi isn't available. This is off by default. Downloads using cellular data are limited to 100MB per episode. If an episode is larger than that, it won't start downloading until you're connected to Wi-Fi.
Podcast-specific settings: The second place you'll find subscription settings is within the Podcasts app. Tap a podcast subscription under My Podcasts and pull down with one finger to reveal the settings buttons. These settings are unique to each subscription. If you don't change anything here, the podcast subscription will just use the default settings. If you do make changes to a specific subscription’s settings, they'll only apply to that podcast.
Play: This setting lets you change the order in which a subscription plays. If you're listening to a news style podcast, you may want to set this to play the new episodes first. If the series is more episodic, you may prefer to play oldest to newest.
Sort Order: This changes the sort order of episodes that appear for a podcast (not its playback order).
Subscribed: When this is on, new episodes of this podcast will be marked as unplayed as they become available.
Refresh Every: You can choose how often your iOS device checks for new episodes to your subscriptions. It's set to check every six hours by default.
Limit Episodes: You can pick how many episodes you see for subscriptions.
Download Episodes: The latest episodes of your podcasts will download automatically.
Delete Played Episodes: If this is on, episodes will be deleted 24 hours after you finish playing them unless you've marked them as Saved.
Inactive subscriptions
If you do not play or access a subscription within 15 days, your subscription to that podcast will go inactive and you will no longer receive updates to it. As soon as you access the subscription again it will refresh.
Podcasts app for iOS: Organizing your podcasts with stations - Apple Support
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202959
Podcasts app for iOS: Organizing your podcasts with stations
Learn how to organize and group your podcasts in the Podcasts app for iOS by using stations.
With the Podcasts app for iOS, you can organize your podcast episodes in three different ways in the My Stations portion of the app:
Stations are like smart playlists. You can set up rules, and the station will automatically update with podcast episodes of your subscriptions that match.
On-The-Go allows you to manually create a list of podcast episodes from any of your subscriptions.
iTunes Playlists are playlists of your podcasts you can make on a Mac or PC with iTunes. You can then access these playlists on your iOS device.
Create a station
Tap My Stations.
Tap New Station.
Give your new station a name and tap Save.
Choose which subscriptions you want to be a part of the station.
Tap Done.
After you set up a station, you can change its settings so that the station includes only a certain number of episodes, audio or video podcasts, or unplayed episodes. You can also set the playback order for a station and group them so that all episodes of one podcast play together.
Cheers,
Judy

Why are my applications that are assigned to specific desktops randomly rearranging themselves on other desktops?

I'm on a late 2013 Retina 13" MacBook Pro running OS X Mavericks Version 10.9.4 and for some reason most of my applications assigned to specific desktops are rearranging themselves to other desktops.
For example, I've created eight desktops. I've assigned Safari to appear on desktop three. While using Safari, when I swipe once from to left between desktops using my three fingers, I end up on desktop seven. It appears that Safari automatically reassigns it's self on desktop six. I swipe back to desktop three. From the dock, I find Safari and do a right click to have the application menu pop-up, I hover over options and assign Safari to "This Desktop" again. I begin using Safari, and if I'm unlucky, and I swipe from left to right I end up on desktop four.
This happens constantly and it's become annoying. Is this a bug?
For work, I use a late 2008 Non-Retina 15" MacBook Pro running OS X Mavericks Version 10.9.4 and that laptop has no issues.

Right click (cntl click) the icon on the dock. Select options and set "assign to" None, All or This desktop.
Captfred

Spaces sometimes rearrange themselves

Sometimes spaces, or desktop, will rearrange themselves. This only seems to happen when I have three or more desktops. When this happens and I go to Mission Control, the spaces at the top will literally be labeled, in order: Desktop 1, Desktop 3, Desktop 2. I've been trying to figure out how this happens and I can't. I can't seem to make it happen, it just... happens.
If anyone has any ideas as to what's happening, how to make it happen, and, especially, how to make it not happen, I'd be glad to hear.
Cheer,
Jellyfrank

System Preferences, Mission Control, "Automatically rearrange spaces...."
Is this checked?
charlie

Finder files/drives rearrange themselves on restart

Hi all-
how do I keep this from happening? I'd like to keep my finder files and drives in the same place when I restart but they keep rearranging on restart.
thanks, Lisa

LSDLLC wrote:
how do I keep this from happening? I'd like to keep my finder files and drives in the same place when I restart but they keep rearranging on restart.
If you mean the icons that you'd like to see down the right-hand side of your computer's Desktop, the first thing you should do is to assure that no other files are crowding those, either from below or from the left. Try leaving plenty of space and see if it helps. BTW, you should be able to test any progress by logging out and back in again, rather than requiring a complete restart.

Xfce desktop items rearrange themselves between reboots

Hello, I am a new Arch Linux user and this is my first thread. Please pardon any possible mistakes I made on this post.
Almost every time Xfce starts the desktop icons are rearranged. After searching the wiki, I found this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xf … themselves
So after deleting the said files, I restarted Xfce. The problem was not gone.
Then I noticed that it was more complicated: I think it's not the desktop item positions that are changing, but the desktop's margins.
Not all icons are rearranged; only those on the right and the bottom sides of the desktop, the last collumns and rows.
In /home/user/.config/xfce4/desktop/icons.screen0-1350x728.rc these files' positions change back to row=0 col=0 and cannot be placed back to their original location.
The next time I restart Xfce the inaccesible spaces on the desktop are ok once again, and I place the items there. Then the problem repeats itself.
Is there any configuration file I should have manually edited?
I'm using Xfce, xfwm with compositing enabled, and no conky or any other desktop decorations.
inxi -G output:
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GF106 [GeForce GTS 450]
Display Server: X.Org 1.15.1 driver: nvidia
Resolution: [email protected]
GLX Renderer: GeForce GTS 450/PCIe/SSE2
GLX Version: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 304.121
EDIT: This might be actually caused by removing USB flash drives while the computer is shut down. The mentioned file is not changed, ergo a mess is caused when it's read on startup. I can't confirm this, though.
EDIT #2: No, it happened again, and I had not removed any usb flash drives.
Last edited by Sudowoodo (2014-05-18 07:45:37)

Go to ~/Library/Preferences. Move the com.apple.desktop.plist file to the Trash.
Restart your Mac.
~ (Tilde) represents your Home folder.

Install files delete themselves

Hi everyone I just bought a 2gig nano and i have windows xp.
i tried installing with the cd it came with and everything looked fine, but then when i looked for the files there were none, no folders, nothing. i changed my install directory to my desktop so i could see if it even created them or not and i saw the "itunes" and other icons appear and then at the end of the installation they disappeared as if deleting themselves, and then i got the error saying the installation was interrupted.
i have been working and searching for answers about this since yesterday but i havent seen anything similar, i also had the problem of it taking my cd-roms away but i can fix that later right now i'd just like to get itunes installed and working so i can use my ipod. i even tried downloading the itunes installer separately and it does the same thing.
there is an "itunessetup.exe" icon on my desktop with the classic white square icon, and it says cannot delete because its in use but there are no itunes processes running at all.
i tried booting in safe mode and nothing works there either.
i will appreciate any help u have to offer!
thank you for takin the time to read this

well done dynobyke!
for some alternate techniques with this one (especially if you've got XP Pro, see):
iTunes for Windows installation quits with 1607 error, while publishing product information, or is interrupted
love, b

Simple manual file rearrangement in Finder

I've been using my iMac for almost 2 weeks now and stumbled upon a problem of some sort:
I am unable to manually drag and drop my photos inside the Finder to rearrange their order.
I dont need all the other automated sorting options. All i need is to be able go in the photos folder using icon view, click on a photo (any file) and drag it where i want it to be.
I know i can just use the view options to turn any sorting off, but then the files tend to get scattered all over the place. I need them to be nicely gritted AND manually movable/swapable.
I know this problem exists on Windows 7 and is not fixed yet.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Message was edited by: rudenc

Yes, I do understand what you mean. And i do get the same results as you when using the "Snap to Grid" settings, but that's not what i need.
An example. Let's imagine a folder with 3 .jpg files. Named 1.jpg, 2.jpg and 3.jpg. All in that order. With no grid spaces empty between them. The folder is using the "snap to grid" setting and all the icons are aligned perfectly and all is well. But now i want to change the file order like this: 1.jpg, 3.jpg, 2.jpg. The easiest way to do that is to do these 3 steps:
1) Click on 3.jpg and hold
2) Drag the file 3.jpg inbetween 1.jpg and 2.jpg
3) Drop the file
What should happen: the file 2.jpg should automatically slide a bit to the grid place on the right and make way for the 3.jpg, thus making effectively the order 1.jpg, 3.jpg, 2.jpg.
What is happening and what i want to get solved: i click, i drag and when i drop the file it slides back the way it came from, with no order changed whatsoever.
I hope i was clear enough. This is very important for me and i would really hate to find out, that on Mac this basic file sorting thing is not implemented.

When editing clips in timeline, individual clips rearrange themselves without my direction.

It happens when I move my cursor over the clips, but there is no other indicator beforehand that it will happen. It's quite random. They will move themselves however they see fit, I guess.
I'm not using the touchpad on my Mac, so it isn't that.
Premiere Elements 13
MacBook Pro
OS X 10.10.1
Help?

aspangler85
Did you purchase the program from Adobe as an online download? Then you should be able to get a money back return if you are within 30 days of the purchase.
But, have you considered an uninstall, free ccleaner run through, and reinstall with antivirus and firewall(s) disabled?
CCleaner - Download
You could try a less drastic action and delete the Adobe Premiere Elements Prefs file. It is my understanding that file is located
Users/Owner/Libraries/Application Support/Adobe/Premiere Elements/13.0.
Please let us know the outcome.
Thank you.
ATR

Desktop folders keep setting themselves to small and rearranging themselves

Help! I just got this computer and the folders on the desktop keep shrinking to the smallest size and re-arranging themselves on the desktop. Every time I go in and change it and re-organize them and then out of nowhere they shrink and move around again. boo hoo!

Hi,
Open a Finder window. Select your Home folder in the Sidebar on the left then open the Library folder then the Preferences folder.
Move the com.apple.desktop.plist file to the Trash.
Restart your Mac. Try arranging the folders from the Finder View menu.
A word to the wise... too many folders on the Destop can slow your Mac down as well as corrupting Desktop preferences. If you can, move as many folders as you can to the Documents folder.

Why do my bookmarks rearrange themselves every time I start Firefox 3.6?

I recently installed Windows 7 on this computer and upgraded to Firefox 3.6. I used Fierfox Sync to import my old links, and right away I noticed that the order of my list of links changes every time I open Firefox. Thinking it had something to do with Firefox Sync, I uninstalled the addon, but the problem persists. It's not exactly crippling, but it's enough of an annoyance that I'm ready to switch to another browser. What's going on?
Here are a few additional observations:
* It doesn't appear that Firefox is trying to arrange the list by alphabetic or numeric order. Every time I open the program, the list appears in a completely different order.
* It also doesn't appear that Firefox is trying to arrange them in order of "most visited" or "most recently visited". There's at least one site that I have visited only once or twice that keeps creeping up the list. While sites I visit several times a day seem to move around at random.
* Links in folders (and folders within other folders) seem to be unaffected. Although the top-level folders do move around the list.
* When I try to rearrange my list, the space between the first and second items on the Bookmarks Menu is untouchable. I cannot place links, folders or seperators there. But I can move the first and second items to other places on the list, and I can place items just above or just below them.
* I also occasionally have trouble placing links in other spots on the list. When I drag them to a location and release them, they appear 2, 3 or 4 spots below where I expect them to appear. It feels like Firefox is trying to force them into a specific order, but it's not based on their names, addresses or frequency of use.
* Items at the top of the list move around a lot more than items at the bottom. I have a few links that I keep at the bottom of my list "just in case" I need to visit an old business site. And they have been unaffected by this problem.
* I have the same problem with my Bookmarks Toolbar list and my Bookmarks Menu List. Fortunately links haven't jumped from one list to another.

MikeClark - removing Viewpoint Media Player did the trick for me too. Thank you.

Files rearrange themselves

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