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Need an Easy fix for annoying problem with sorting in Windows

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questorfla:
This is an embarrassing question to ask as I am very sure the answer is right in front of me somewhere but I never seem to either have time or look in the right place.  I did find a utility to backup and restore the desktop icons but that won't quite get me what I am after.

Windows Desktop normal "Default" sort order arranges the Desktop Icons Alphabetic descending at the start but allows things to be added helter-skelter everywhere afterward.

Some users like to store a 100 icons on their desktop and when they ask me for help it takes forever to locate the ones i need.  Sorting back to alphabetic>descending takes two clicks on sort by name  instead of one.  If I could, I would lock there system icons (the ones supplied by windows) to always be where they start out.  Top Left.
 
So this ends up being two requests.  One for a way to lock the 5 default system icons to always be first starting at top left and second a way to make the sort by name always default to alphabetic descending on first click. 
Both of the answers are most likely out there and easy to find but they are never where i look . :(

PS:  An additional nice touch would be a way to lock any specific icon to a specific location on the desktop one by one.  Not in groups like "Stardock" does.  Just a simple "Lock it here" with right click option would be Great!

MilesAhead:
It seems like it should be easy.  But I've looked at quite a few desktop icon utilities since one of my first Shell Extensions was a position save/restore utility stolen from Jeffrey Richter's example in one of his books.

The trouble is the desktop is a ListView Control.  Manipulating it is very cumbersome.

From the description this $5 utility looks like one of the better ones:
http://alternativeto.net/software/fluid-icon-organizer/

But I'm not sure even that one will have all the features you want.

The ones like Fences I haven't looked at in any detail.  I'm guessing the individual lock feature will be the one least likely to be found.  I wrote one program that uses a ListView and I wrote it in AHK just because the ListView manipulation in that language was better than that available in AutoIt3.  Generally speaking the control is a pita to program.

Plus there are so many icon save/restore freewares(many programmers read Richter's book I think)  :)  that nobody wants to pay for them.

TaoPhoenix:
...
Windows Desktop normal "Default" sort order arranges the Desktop Icons Alphabetic descending at the start but allows things to be added helter-skelter everywhere afterward.
...
-questorfla (April 28, 2015, 11:47 AM)
--- End quote ---

I have no idea what this means because the whole point of icons on desktops to me was that you get to move them around! So basically the first thing I do setting up any system is to move the icons into a visual pattern by category!

....
Some users like to store a 100 icons on their desktop and when they ask me for help it takes forever to locate the ones i need.  Sorting back to alphabetic>descending takes two clicks on sort by name  instead of one.  If I could, I would lock there system icons (the ones supplied by windows) to always be where they start out.  Top Left.
 
So this ends up being two requests.  One for a way to lock the 5 default system icons to always be first starting at top left and second a way to make the sort by name always default to alphabetic descending on first click. 
Both of the answers are most likely out there and easy to find but they are never where i look . :(
...
-questorfla (April 28, 2015, 11:47 AM)
--- End quote ---

I am certainly in that "Yay! Icons!" group! But once you get the first three system icons in the top left and the Recycle icon in the bottom left, I don't know why you'd "want to move them". The main time I lose them is when about every couple months I fiddle with my screen resolution and then Windows dumps them anywhere it wants to!

IainB:
If one is wanting an easily sortable order for the icons on the desktop, then the quickest way would seem to be to open the folder C:\Users\[UserID]\Desktop in Windows Explorer. (At any rate, that's what it is Win8.1, but it might differ in earlier versions of  Windows.)
The icons on the Desktop are .lnk files.
Groups of icons can be located in folders on the desktop, and I have used Fences to do that as well (looks nicer).
However, possibly the simplest control of the alphabetic display order can be by using appropriate link file names. For example giving one's browser link files names like:

* Browser-Chrome
* Browser-IE
* Browser-Firefox- will make the browser icons appear clustered together sequentially in the Quick Launch bar or Desktop. Thus link filenames beginning with "." or "A" will come first, "B" second, and so forth, through to "Z".

If Desktop icons have been shuffled about using drag-and-drop (same as can be done in Quick Launch bar icons), so that they are now in a confusing order/arrangement, they can be quickly reset into alphabetic order (or other WinExplorer column order) and then manually shuffled about afresh into the desired state.

However, it is probably more efficient/effective to avoid manually shuffling things and use the filename method (above) to determine and set the icon groups and order, as, if that becomes disarranged by manual  drag-and-drop, then it can always be quickly re-sorted back into the alphabetic sequence you had previously created by your file-naming.

Sorry, done in haste.
Hope that makes sense or is of use.

Curt:
... control of the alphabetic display order can be by using appropriate link file names. For example giving one's browser link files names like:

* Browser-Chrome
* Browser-IE
* Browser-Firefox- will make the browser icons appear clustered together sequentially in the Quick Launch bar or Desktop. Thus link filenames beginning with "." or "A" will come first, "B" second, and so forth, through to "Z".-IainB (April 28, 2015, 11:08 PM)
--- End quote ---

-this is exactly the way I organized my icons in True Launch Bar (my desktop shows no icons, except bin); it is so much faster when you are searching for a type of program, rather than for a name (especially when the name turns out to begin with "Launch ")!

But of course, questorfla wanted something to help him work on other people's computers, so forgive  that I spoke!  :-[

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