How to move windows that open up offscreen?

Question

I have a dual monitor setup, and I recently played around with the positioning settings, and some of my single window applications do the favour of preserving where they were last closed, and opening in the same position later. Unfortuanately, that now places them out of the viewable area of my screens!

Is there some way to force a particular window into the viewable area? If it matters at all, this is on Windows XP 32b.

Answer 1

I use this approach:

• Use ALT+TAB to switch to the off-screen application.
• Press ALT-SPACE to bring up the system menu (you won't see it because it is off screen)
• Press R to select the "Restore" menu choice to ensure the windows isn't is maximized (you can not move it if it is maximized)
• Press ALT-SPACE again, then M to select the "Move" menu choice.
• Press one of the arrow keys to initiate the movement.
• Now just use the mouse to place the window where you want.

If you are using a non-english version of Windows, the "R" and "M" menu choices probably wil be different.

Answer 2

For windows 7 users: Windows + Shift + Left/Right will move the window to the subsequent monitor

Answer 3

You can right-click the program's button on the taskbar, and then click "Move". You can now use the arrow-buttons on your keyboard to move the window where you can see it. Requires some fiddling, sometimes the windows get "stuck" on the monitors edges. You can also try using the mouse, but the keyboard is a bit more reliable if you can't see the window yet ;-)

Answer 4

To quickly solve this problem in the future, and to position applications over the dual-screen I can recommend Winsplit Revolution. It reduces solving this problem to simply pressing Ctrl-Alt and a num-pad key to put the window back exactly where you want it.

Answer 5

Another fast way is to r-click on the task bar and select Cascade Windows.

Answer 6

Back before there was the task bar, I used to fix this problem with Alt+Space to bring up the window menu, then M for the Move function. The arrow keys would then allow you to move the window back on-screen.

Answer 7

I use a nifty little tool called Shove-it which simply checks whether any window is outside the screen edge and shoves it back onto the screen again. It's ancient software (and the homepage proves it) but works on all Windows versions.

Answer 8

I had the same issue with winamp. The only (unsatisfactory) solution i found so far: change the screen resolution to a different one and back

Thomas

Answer 9

I just ran into this problem with Git GUI on Windows 7, which is based on Tk and as such tends to glitch out in weird ways at times on Windows. I tried hitting Alt-Space and using the move command to shimmy it back into view, but it seemed stuck. Maximising it would bring it back, but if I put it back into windowed mode it would disappear again.

What I did was maximise it, grab the title bar, and drag it to the side of the screen so that Aero Snap sized it to half the screen size and put it into windowed mode. After that, I dragged it away from the side of the screen, and regained control of it.

Answer 10

You could use NIRSOFT winLister. I noticed the “Move” method is not available on windows 7 when you are using the classic theme, and various other methods failed so I’m posting my “IF all else fails” alternative.

1) Download the WinLister application from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/winlister.html .

2) Run WinLister as Administrator and select the window you wish to move back on Screen. Not running as administrator will not give the application the ability to move the windows for you.

3) Right click and select “Center Selected Windows” and your done!

Screenshots: http://mbakopoulos.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/bring-misplaced-off-screen-windows-back-to-your-desktop-if-all-else-fails/#more-402