Ordering buttons on the Taskbar

[Guest]

I've noticed sometimes the buttons on my taskbar get reordered. I don't know
why this happens. I also can't figure out how to order them back to what I'd
prefer. Can anyone help on this?

 

[Ron Badour]

Your taskbar is the area between the start button (or if displayed, the
Quick Launch area) and the system tray (clock area). The icons displayed on
the taskbar are listed in the order the programs they represent were opened.
With that said, I am guessing that you may not be asking about the taskbar
and if so, please provide clarifying information.

 

[Guest]

Yes I am talking about the area to the right of the Start button and to the
left of the system tray. The buttons show up in the order which the programs
were opened. Today the order of these buttons changed. It has happened
before. I'd like to know why and how to chagne the order back to what I want
without closing all the running programs.

 

[Ron Badour]

I have not seen nor heard of that happening so I cannot comment on its
cause. I don't believe you can natively reorder the position of the
buttons short of closing and reopening the programs. You could check out
this 3rd party application:
http://www.onlinetoolsteam.com/TaskbarCommander/

 

[Guest]

If you click the program icon and keep the mouse button clicked just drag the
button to the place you want it to go to but only move it left or right not
on to the desktop

This happens to me sometimes but it takes just one sec to move them back
into the right place.

 

[Lem]

GS Ghali must be referring to the Quick Launch bar. You can't drag the
buttons that symbolize running applications.

 

[Ron Badour]

Agree--taskbar buttons cannot be dragged natively.

 

[Anna]

Myrna:
As you've heard from the other responses, there's no way (at least to my
knowledge) that the taskbar buttons (other than the Quick Launch ones) can
be moved with any internal XP utility, however, there is a program you might
want to look into which ostensibly does this - Taskbar Button Manager (it's
a freebie). I've never used it myself but I'm aware that at least one of our
customers has been using this program and to the best of my knowledge is
apparently satisfied with it. See...
http://www.bestfreewaredownload.com/freeware/t-free-taskbar-button-manager-freeware-qmekmizn.html
Anna

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

You're not talking about the Taskbar, you're talking about the QuickLaunch
bar, an optional part of the Taskbar. You can drag the icons to order them
the way you want them, but if the order gets lost, I don't think there's any
way to quickly get it back. You have to manually re-order them. If you
disable the QL bar and then re-enable it, the order is lost. The default,
when the manual order is lost, is to order them alphabetically.

I don't know what's causing your order to be lost unless it's that you
disabled/re-enabled the QL bar, but the order is stored in the Registry, so
perhaps yours is having some problem that causes that set of entries to be
lost and then recreated in default order.

 

[Guest]

Anna,
Thank you for trying to help. It's very odd that I need added software to
move the buttons back when they are not supposed to move in the first place!

Myrna

 

[Guest]

Gary,
I am not talking about the quick launch bar. No icons. Buttons and button
groups.

Myrna

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

I assumed the QL bar because you indicated that you could sort them. Buttons
that represent open applications are sorted in the order the apps are opened
and you can't change that. If the buttons that are open get re-ordered
somehow, that's about as strange as it gets. Can you see it happen? Does
anything else happen, like Windows Explorer having to be killed and
restarted? Are you using any full-screen application?

 

[Guest]

I don't remember indicating that I can sort the buttons. They always appear
in the order that the applications are opened.

Nothing odd happens. No crashes or restarts needed. I don't see the buttons
move. I am not using a full screen application. At the time it happened
today, I had Word, Excel, File Explorer, Firefox, and Groupwise open.
Groupwise was first, and it moved to the rightmost spot on the task bar. I
look down and my email button is not where it was.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

1. I don't see an email program in the list of apps you say were open, or is
that what you use Groupwise for?

2. I would suspect File Explorer as a potential cause of the issue. Windows
Explorer (explorer.exe) is what handles the taskbar, and using an Explorer
replacement could well interfere with normal Explorer operations. I'd try to
find a forum for File Explorer and see if the issue is mentioned.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

If you click the program icon and keep the mouse button clicked just drag the
button to the place you want it to go to but only move it left or right not
on to the desktop

This happens to me sometimes but it takes just one sec to move them back
into the right place.

No, this won't work. There is no way to do this natively in Windows
(although there are third-party utilities that can do it).

You are perhaps thinking of the Quick Launch bar, where you *can* do
this.

Note that the Quick Launch bar is not the Task Bar itself, not is even
*part* of the Task Bar. It's a separate tool bar; although by default,
it appears *on* the Task Bar, it can be dragged off it and moved to
any side of the screen you prefer.

 

[Guest]

Yes Groupwise is our email program.

File Explorer = windows explorer. Would two microsoft programs conflict? I
leave this open all the time but the problem occurs once in a while.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

"File Explorer" is the name of a third-party file explorer. If that isn't
what you referred to, if you were referring to Windows Explorer, then ignore
that idea. I'm back to having no idea, except that the Z_order for the
buttons must have gotten changed, probably the same way other volatile
Registry entries get lost sometimes. Might have an explanation involving
some other app you're running, or it could simply be that your Registry is
prone to corruption.