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Relocate offscreen windows back to your desktop
Check out these three options for rescuing rogue windows that appear offscreen instead of where you want them.
Most programs you run on your computer are pretty smart when it comes to making sure you can see what's going on. If, for whatever reason, a program tries to open off of your desktop, it will usually catch itself and reset its position. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case -- sometimes you end up with an inaccessible window running off in space. Perhaps you sometimes have a second (or third) monitor hooked up to your computer that isn't there at the moment, or some bug occurred when the program was setting its position. If the program doesn't catch it, the window itself can be difficult to rescue.
Fortunately, there are a few quick methods you can do to pull these wayward windows back into the visible space on your monitor. Read on to find out how.
Option 1: Cascading windows
(Credit:
Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)
The first option you have is also the most likely not to work, and the one most likely to leave you with a mess to clean up after. To accomplish this, right-click on the taskbar and click Cascade windows. Once done, all of your open windows will reposition in the upper left of your monitor, cascading downward. Unfortunately, many media players will not reposition in this manner, and it forces ALL of your windows to reposition -- even the ones that were behaving themselves.
Option 2: Manually moving
(Credit:
Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)
While it may seem odd to talk about manually moving a window that you can't even get to with your mouse, there is actually a way to control the window's position with your keyboard. This can be done by holding the Shift key and right-clicking the program's taskbar icon. Select Move from the menu that appears, and begin pressing the arrow keys to force the window to move position.
Alternatively, if you put the program in focus by left-clicking on its taskbar icon, you can move the window by holding the Windows key and pressing the arrow keys.
Option 3: Maximizing the window
(Credit:
Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)
This is more of a temporary fix than the other options. Hold the Shift key and right-click on the program's icon and select Maximize from the menu that appears. This will force the window to go full screen on your monitor, which will at least let you view its contents. This will likely only last as long as you don't remove the maximization. As soon as you go back to normal-window-mode, the window will resume its offscreen position.
Most of these should, at the very least temporarily, fix the issue of offscreen windows. If you have any additional tips for finding lost windows, share them in the comments section below!
(Via Ghacks)
