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No drag and drop in Stacks after SL upgrade

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Deek9000

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Has anyone else had this problem? When opening a stack (fan or grid, doesn't matter) I can't drag any files. Clicking and dragging will instead open the file when the mouse button is released.

Any pointers/suggestions appreciated.

Cheers
 
Ice Cream Man said:
I just drag'n'dropped from a stack, and back to a stack. no problem.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know it's SUPPOSED to work. Worked fine under 10.5.8. But not any longer. It's a real PITA, kind of renders the stacks useless other than fancy app launchers.

Additional info: 2Ghz 2Gb mini running 10.6.3. (clean install)
 
Does this persist after a reboot/logout?

If so, move ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist to your desktop.

Kill the dock process, you can do this via Activity monitor or Terminal:

Code: 
killall Dock

Test the drag and drop functionality. Is it working? If not, put the dock plist back. If it is, there is a corrupt entry. Rebuild your dock from scratch.

If that doesn't work, report back.

Also, is the stack built from a folder or is it one of the "Recents" stacks? If the latter, you cannot drag and drop from those stacks.
 
calderone said:
Is it working? If not, put the dock plist back. If it is, there is a corrupt entry. Rebuild your dock from scratch.

If that doesn't work, report back.

Also, is the stack built from a folder or is it one of the "Recents" stacks? If the latter, you cannot drag and drop from those stacks.
Click to expand...

This has been the case since the SL install as far as I can remember (this was a few weeks ago) so have tried the steps above but even a dock with a fresh plist still refuses to drag and drop. All stacks are folders (Downloads, Apps, Documents, some I dropped in the dock myself,...) and all display the same behaviour (or refusal to behave).

What exactly do you mean by rebuilding the dock from scratch?

Also, I'm using a custom dock background, but this shouldn't affect the functionality?
 
Deek9000 said:
This has been the case since the SL install as far as I can remember (this was a few weeks ago) so have tried the steps above but even a dock with a fresh plist still refuses to drag and drop. All stacks are folders (Downloads, Apps, Documents, some I dropped in the dock myself,...) and all display the same behaviour (or refusal to behave).

What exactly do you mean by rebuilding the dock from scratch?

Also, I'm using a custom dock background, but this shouldn't affect the functionality?
Click to expand...

What I meant is that if removing the dock plist works, you would just have to rebuild your dock to your liking.

I would consider the custom dock background as a potential problem. Restore to all default settings. If that doesn't work, create another user and try it there.

Do you have any 3rd party add-ons that alter or add to the Dock's functionality?
 
calderone said:
What I meant is that if removing the dock plist works, you would just have to rebuild your dock to your liking.

I would consider the custom dock background as a potential problem. Restore to all default settings. If that doesn't work, create another user and try it there.

Do you have any 3rd party add-ons that alter or add to the Dock's functionality?
Click to expand...

No other add-ons that affect the Dock. And the customised is literally just that, a different background. I'll try a different user account, also run Onyx and then report back. Thanks for the quick responses so far!
 
Deek9000 said:
-> Additional info: 2Ghz 2Gb mini running 10.6.3. (clean install)

Have used Onyx since the install to check disk. Could run it again and see if it fixes anything. Thanks!
Click to expand...

OnyX does other things too, it will clear caches and .plist and things. So you don't always have to dig around to find things. It's usually pretty good for clearing up little inconsistencies.
 
Deek9000 said:
No other add-ons that affect the Dock. And the customised is literally just that, a different background. I'll try a different user account, also run Onyx and then report back. Thanks for the quick responses so far!
Click to expand...

I understand that it is simply a different background, however, since your dock is modified I would look to restore the dock to stock to rule that out.
 
calderone said:
I understand that it is simply a different background, however, since your dock is modified I would look to restore the dock to stock to rule that out.
Click to expand...

I agree, makes sense. Anyway, drag and drop worked fine in the Guest account (customised bg modified docks system wide by the look of it too). So I logged back in to my own account and drag and drop is back to normal in my OWN account too 🙂

So simply restarting or logging out didn't solve it, but logging into another account and back has done the trick.

Still doesn't add up, but at least I know what to try if it happens again.

Thanks guys, dock is back in all its drag and dropping glory!
 
I wish those steps worked for me

This problem manifested itself a couple months ago for me and is not solved by the same steps. I've run Onyx, reapplied the 10.6.3 combo update, logged into a separate test account, deleted the Dock preferences, etc.

The only reliable way to restore my drag/drop functionality is to logout and log in. But this is only a temporary fix, because the functionality will reliably quit again. It doesn't seem to be related to any particular program, since I've tried not using just about everything from iTunes to Pages.

Any other ideas?
 
I'm having this same issue, and your suggestion worked for me as well.
  1. Log out of account
  2. Log into Guest account
  3. Log out of Guest account
  4. Log back into normal account
 
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