![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Forestfen was having a problem deleting files on her computer, and I finally figured out what was causing it. Her problem was that instead of having the files be deleted, they'd end up multiplied. She tried deleting them again and again, but ended up with more and more copies of the files in the same folder. The last time I tried to help her, she showed me how she was doing the deletes, and her method looked fine. We couldn't recreate the problem that day (we were able to delete the files in question), so it remained a mystery.
Today I had her show me her method again. She selected multiple files by holding down the Control key and selecting the individual files by clicking them with her mouse. Then she right-clicked and selected the Delete option. It worked fine that time. Then she tried to delete some more files, and I noticed a momentary refresh of the window.... while in the process of selecting the group of files, she had accidentally moved the mouse slightly and done a drag and drop operation. Because of that inadvertent little motion, Windows was pasting the currently-selected set of files into the same folder.
So then I showed her how to delete the files using the keyboard to select the files instead of the mouse, to avoid the problem.
I wish Windows had a way of turning off drag and drop functionality within Windows Explorer. It's so easy to make inadvertent mistakes like that because of it. A few times, I've myself accidentally moved a folder because of it. If you don't notice right away that this has happened, you could have a hard time finding that folder again, and you may think it has disappeared.
Today I had her show me her method again. She selected multiple files by holding down the Control key and selecting the individual files by clicking them with her mouse. Then she right-clicked and selected the Delete option. It worked fine that time. Then she tried to delete some more files, and I noticed a momentary refresh of the window.... while in the process of selecting the group of files, she had accidentally moved the mouse slightly and done a drag and drop operation. Because of that inadvertent little motion, Windows was pasting the currently-selected set of files into the same folder.
So then I showed her how to delete the files using the keyboard to select the files instead of the mouse, to avoid the problem.
I wish Windows had a way of turning off drag and drop functionality within Windows Explorer. It's so easy to make inadvertent mistakes like that because of it. A few times, I've myself accidentally moved a folder because of it. If you don't notice right away that this has happened, you could have a hard time finding that folder again, and you may think it has disappeared.