Windows accidental drag and drop
Mar. 9th, 2019 02:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
djinncoyoteOnce in a while, I accidentally drag files or folders in Windows Explorer and drop them in another folder. Sometimes I don't realize it has happened until much later when I can't find the file(s) in the normal location anymore.
Sometimes I notice it right away, but it isn't immediately obvious where the files were moved to. Or I may suspect an accidental move has happened, but am not sure. In this case, one can hover over the "Undo" button in the top-left corner of Windows Explorer to see a brief description of the last action that was done, which can be undone by clicking the button. That lets you decide if you want to undo it or not.
There doesn't seem to be any particularly good way of preventing accidental drag and drops in Windows. There are workarounds, but they have drawbacks.
To reduce the likelihood of accidental drag and drops, you can increase the distance you need to drag an item before it invokes the drag and drop functionality. This requires a registry tweak:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/drag-and-drop-confirmation-prompt-accidentally/3d559ab4-f656-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5
However, this doesn't only affect drag and drops within Windows Explorer, but also on the taskbar and elsewhere. On my laptop, the default DragWidth and DragHeight values were 4.
Changing them to 50 causes a drop operation not to start until you've dragged an item about 1 cm.
Changing them to 100 -> about 2 cm.
Changing them to 300 -> about 2.25 inches... however with this value, dragging and dropping items on the Taskbar seems to no longer work at all.
Another option is to change the default drag and drop operation from move and/or copy to "create a shortcut". This also requires a registry change:
https://superuser.com/a/1149337
This change means that you will no longer be able to move files via drag & drop within Windows Explorer; you'll have to always use cut & paste instead. So you may find yourself accidentally creating shortcuts by mistake, when you really meant to move files.
Sometimes I notice it right away, but it isn't immediately obvious where the files were moved to. Or I may suspect an accidental move has happened, but am not sure. In this case, one can hover over the "Undo" button in the top-left corner of Windows Explorer to see a brief description of the last action that was done, which can be undone by clicking the button. That lets you decide if you want to undo it or not.
There doesn't seem to be any particularly good way of preventing accidental drag and drops in Windows. There are workarounds, but they have drawbacks.
To reduce the likelihood of accidental drag and drops, you can increase the distance you need to drag an item before it invokes the drag and drop functionality. This requires a registry tweak:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/drag-and-drop-confirmation-prompt-accidentally/3d559ab4-f656-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5
However, this doesn't only affect drag and drops within Windows Explorer, but also on the taskbar and elsewhere. On my laptop, the default DragWidth and DragHeight values were 4.
Changing them to 50 causes a drop operation not to start until you've dragged an item about 1 cm.
Changing them to 100 -> about 2 cm.
Changing them to 300 -> about 2.25 inches... however with this value, dragging and dropping items on the Taskbar seems to no longer work at all.
Another option is to change the default drag and drop operation from move and/or copy to "create a shortcut". This also requires a registry change:
https://superuser.com/a/1149337
This change means that you will no longer be able to move files via drag & drop within Windows Explorer; you'll have to always use cut & paste instead. So you may find yourself accidentally creating shortcuts by mistake, when you really meant to move files.