Have you at any time tried using to pick out a bunch of files in Windows Explorer when keeping down the Ctrl primary, then all of the sudden there are duplicate copies of all of people files sitting during the folder? Really irritating, so how do we correct it?
To illustrate the issue, you are attempting and find a lot of files by keeping down the Ctrl critical and clicking on each one… after which suddenly you’ve got a ton of copies of all your files. This gets even more annoying in a large directory, because now you’ve got to remove the copies.
The reason this happens is because you moved your mouse more than 4 pixels whilst clicking down on a file, so Windows assumes you’ve dragged the files and want to copy them, and is happy to litter your folder with duplicates.
Fixing Copy Annoyance in Windows XP
If you are running Windows XP, you can use Microsoft’s free Tweak UI utility to configure the drag setting easily. What we’ll do is tell Windows not to assume that we’re dragging until we’ve move more than 4 pixels, which should eliminate this trouble, but still make drag and drop work fine for regular operations.
Just click on Mouse on the left-hand side, then change the value under “Drag” to something more than 4 pixels.
I wouldn’t set the value too high, because then it will make it difficult to drag things the way you normally would. Somewhere between 10-20 should help stop the accidental copying,
Office 2007 Product Key, but you might need to set it higher. You can test the effect by dragging the test icon around.
Fixing the Annoyance in Windows Vista
Unfortunately Tweak UI doesn’t work in Windows Vista,
Office 2007 Ultimate, so you’ll have to make the registry setting manually,
Office Pro 2010 Key, or use the downloadable registry hack file I’ve provided, which will set the drag size to 20 pixels.
Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, then browse down to the following main:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
On the right-hand side you should see two values, DragHeight and DragWidth. Just double-click on them and change the value to something higher. You might have to experiment to get it right for you,
Office 2007 Pro Key, but I’d start with somewhere between 10 and 20.
Note that you can pretty much disable drag and drop by setting it to a extremely high value.
Download Registry File (Vista or XP)
This registry hack file will set the values to 20 pixels,
Windows 7 sale, which may or may not be right for you. You can always just edit the file if you want different values.
To install, extract and double-click on the StopDragDroppingAnnoyance.reg to enter the information into the registry. There’s a reset file that will change the setting back to the defaults as well.
Download StopDragDroppingAnnoyance Registry Hack
For extra credit: you can also enable checkboxes in Windows Vista’s Explorer for easier file selecting.
Office 2007 Ultimate Fixing Annoyances Stop Windo
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