One of my important files has relocated itself

Is this the old topic and solution you were trying to recall?

http://able2know.org/topic/99239-1

Stupid me - I should have gone to My Topics & not bothered people with stuff I could have found for myself. Anyway, 99239 is the one, but the solution doesn't seem to work.

I have managed to get rid of the strip (mostly - there's still a thin line of it but it barely shows) and my folder is back on the desktop. But why did it do this, and why can't I get rid of it completely?

Is it the same description of the problem though? Was there a file icon on your desktop that is now being displayed as a vertical strip?

And, when you say it is being displayed as a vertical strip, is that occuring on your desktop or when you have the Windows Explorer/File Manager tool open?

Sorry to keep having to ask these picky questions but I'm not there to visually see what you are seeing so I need to ask you to be my eyes for me and look for things that I would need to look for to do a process of elimination to figure out what the problem is and what the solution for it will be.

What I used to tell people when I was working a computer Help Desk was that they needed to be my eyes for me and that I needed them to pretend I was blind and they needed to verbally describe to me in specific details exactly what they were seeing on the screen.

Which folder is it? Is it a Word document or your Browser's Favorite's List or your My Documents Folder, etc?

A description of the folder other than "an important file" will help to provide a permanent solution for you.

If I hover my mouse near the strip it does disappear (as noted in my previous question) but never really goes away.

"Is it the same description of the problem though? Was there a file icon on your desktop that is now being displayed as a vertical strip?" Yes, this is the same problem.It's a folder of personal stuff from Word and scanner things with a file icon on the desktop. The file icon is now back on the desktop, but there's a new wrinkle. When I open My Documents all the documents in that folder display in the usual manner except squeezed way over to the left, leaving the right half of the screen blank (the exact space the the vertical strip takes if expanded to the left). So that strip is definitely lurking somewhere on the right.

"Windows Explorer/File Manager tool open?". No

Don't worry about being picky. I totally understand.

Does this look like what you are trying to describe? I used my own My Documents folder and scrunched up the columns to the left.



If so, take a look at the column labels where I have drawn some blue circles. Between each column there is a faint dividing line that you can grab with your mouse pointer and slide back and forth to adjust the width of the columns. There may be multiple columns scrunched up on top of each other so you may need to widen several columns to get it straightened out again.

By the way, so that we can get some common terminology going, what you are seeing when you open your My Documents Folder is the Windows Explorer (it used to be called the File Manager).

If what I described and the suggestion I gave isn't it, let me know and we'll try something else.

No, not exactly. File size is not given, and whole words form the list - one or two, such as "afghan" or "Am Heart", not initial letters with dots The vertical alphab listing is like your example, though.

I'm not understanding your description of it. In the other post you described it as everything being squeezed over to the left in a thin strip.

Do you know how to do screen captures and then how to post an image here? If so, could you do that so I can actually see what you are attempting to describe?

The only reason the dots are there is because I made the column narrower than the largest title length.

Latest wrinkle: This unwanted strip has now decided to appear at the top of the screen. I didn't tell it to; I just want it to permanently GO AWAY!!!.

Finally straightened this toolbar problem. So that's one difficulty down.

Thanks for all help.

Why not post what you did so that if it happens again you can refer back to this topic to remind yourself how to fix it.


It was a toolbar and not a file folder as you described earlier?

The thin strip with icons that disappears and went from the right side to the top reminds me of the Office toolbar. Hmmm

If one right clicks on a blank space on the toolbar a little menu appears which tells exactly what to do - click on the first item which says something like "delete the toolbar". My problem was that I didn't identify the strip as a toolbar I think of toolbars as displaying, well, TOOLS, and what I was shown was a list of documents. Oh well...

I kept saying "folder" because it was the contents of a folder that kept appearing. I just plain never connected a strip of document titles with a toolbar.