CS3 help?
 

I'm on Windows 7 running CS3, and for some reason just today I can no longer drag images from Windows Explorer straight into CS3 to open them :( I've Googled and tried resetting my Preferences files to ultimately reinstalling the program, but nothing is working :(

At first I thought maybe it was an Explorer issue, but I can drag images into Lightroom and Word, just not CS3. It's beyond frustrating for me because I NEED Explorer open to see thumbnails of what's in a kit and then I just pick and choose what to drag unto my canvas :(

Help, please??? TIA!

Hmmmmm.... I have NO idea. How weird! I would have suggested resetting preferences, but since that didn't work, I'm at a loss. Hopefully one of the other girls will have a suggestion for ya!

I've never been able to drag things from Explorer into CS3...

I know I can't drag things when the Type tool is activated. I have to click on the Move tool first. I bet it's not something that simple though.

I'm not on a Windows machine, and this doesn't really help you with whatever is happening in PS, but . . . Can you select the files in Explorer, right click on them, choose "Open With," and then select Photoshop as the program to open the files? I do that sometimes on my Mac, but I'm not really familiar with what the right-click menus would be on a PC.

I have no idea why that would happen but did you change anything before it started happening? Did you install anything new, update anything, download anything, change settings, etc? In general something like that doesn't just quit working, there's usually a reason. The tricky part is figuring out what's causing it.

Do you have a backup you could revert back to before the problem started?

Sorry for the late reply, been out the whole day!

Lydia, I did think of simply making PS the default program to open image files, except that I have Irfanview installed if I wanna quickly view say, an element or detail of a paper, since that program is an image viewer that loads quickly. That's the only reason I didn't make PS the default viewer for image files.

Lynnette, I *DID* tweak a setting in my Control Panel for CS3, but when this wonkiness happened I went back and changed it, but it didn't work. Then I resetted my Preference files--nothing. Then I reinstalled--nada.

From the Start Menu, I right-clicked on the PS shortcut, went to Properties, and the ticked the box "run as administrator." When I couldn't drag stuff from Explorer anymore I went back and unticked the box, but it hasn't reverted back.

Trish, how funny that you haven't been able to do that in CS3! Thing is, I would have written this off as a CS3 quirk, EXCEPT that I've already scrapped several pages with CS3 already when I moved to this current laptop. And then it just upped and wonkified on me :S

I think this is what caused the problem because there are a few threads on the Adobe forum that report the same thing. Apparently if you run the program as an administrator you can't drag and drop files? Seems weird but then it is Windows after all. :p

Here's the 2 threads I found:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2863742
http://forums.adobe.com/message/1919731

After you unticked the box, did you restart the computer? I wonder if it just hasn't reverted yet? What happens if you create a new user account? Can you drag and drop files then?

Hmm...okay, I'm going to give this a shot, thanks, Lynnette! I just checked and I know that the program isn't run as administrator anymore. I'll try restarting and see if that works.

ETA: Ugh, nothing. I just had to scrap and instead of dragging I right-click and choose "open in PS" it's like three steps more than i'm used to. Will keep figuring out how to fix this. GAH.

Just thought I'd post an update, lol :)

Well, PS really won't allow me to click and drag with my current account settings (an Administrator account), so I played around with several things:

- created a new Administrator account (didn't work)
- turned on a Guest Account (it worked!)
- created a Standard Account (also worked)

Problem was I didn't want the hassle of changing and fixing up all my settings again on a Standard Account just so it looks like this current one of mine. Then I found this handy post and just ended up creating a NEW Administrator Account and then changing this current account of mine into a Standard Account. The post also details why having both kinds of accounts is good, which is alright for me, lol. But I'm just happy I can click and drag again and NOT have to port over all my settings, etc.

So YAY all is right in my world again :D Lynnette, thanks for those links, which helped me research more on how to fix this ridiculous problem. :p