Desktop icons arrangement

[Guest]

Let me try this the correct way. I am having trouble getting the desktop icons to align properly. The icons have become widely spaced and nothing I have tried lets me rearrange them I have used auto arrange, and I have also gone into appearance in Control Panel and tried to change the size and spacing. Nothing seems to work. Any ideas on how I can fix this?

 

[Mary Sauer]

Right-click your desktop, properties, appearance tab, advanced button, expand the
"item" to icon spacing.

--
Mary Sauer MS MVP
http://office.microsoft.com/
http://www.mvps.org/msauer/
news://msnews.microsoft.com

Let me try this the correct way. I am having trouble getting the desktop icons to

align properly. The icons have become widely spaced and nothing I have tried lets me
rearrange them I have used auto arrange, and I have also gone into appearance in
Control Panel and tried to change the size and spacing. Nothing seems to work. Any
ideas on how I can fix this?

 

[Guest]

Thanks Mary, I did try that and it changes the icon spacing in other windows, such as Control Panel, but it does not change the spacing on the Desktop.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the response, and I do know that I can do that. However, I would like to know how to fix the problem.

 

[Unknown]

Arrange icons to grid.

Rt click on the desktop and uncheck everything that appears when you

highlight 'arrange icons by'. You can then arrange your icons manually
anywhere that you like.

Preet Gill-Kumar

icons to align properly. The icons have become widely spaced and nothing I
have tried lets me rearrange them I have used auto arrange, and I have also
gone into appearance in Control Panel and tried to change the size and
spacing. Nothing seems to work. Any ideas on how I can fix this?

 

[frodo]

sounds like what you want is to "align to grid", as stated, with
auto-arrange turned OFF.

do note however, that the grid can be changed, via rt-click desktop |
appearance | advanced | icon spaceing horiz. and vertical. [mine is set at
40 and 42 FWIW; this allows 15 columns by 13 rows of icons at 1280x1024;
Your Milage May Vary]

BUT (and here's your "problem") you wont see changes there affect the
desktop until you turn off the grid and then turn it back on! Then the
icons will re-snap to the new grid. Also, remember that hitting F5 when
the desktop has the focus will "refresh" it; this can be helpful if the
icons get messed up or you want to make sure things are clean.

=================

a very helpful thing to have is the desktop layout DLL. google for
"desktop layout", you'll find several sources. It'll add two rt-click
items to My Computer that are "save desktop layout" and "restore desktop
layout". It'll remember where you have painstakingly placed you icons, so
when they get munged up (often!) you can easily put then back.