Win 11, PC, icon sort by name failure on main screen

William Barrett 0 Reputation points
2026-10-06T21:39:41.9466667+00:00

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro, fully updated, x64 bit architecture. Plenty of disk, ACER Aspire TC-1760, system about five years old. Two displays, and anything on one is easily moved to the other. Version 10.0.26200 Build 26200.

I have 69 icons displayed on one screen, each named, but in some bizarre order. 7 columns, 10 each, except the last column, 9 high. Each is named. Nothing peculiar or hidden about any name. Variety of folders, installed code, text files, etc.

They need to be in alphabetic order and remain that way. ...not rearranged in a peculiar way.

Settings: Right click mouse: View: Medium icons, Show desktop icons. Sort by: Name

About half of the icons seem to go in order, 37 of them to be exact, sorted alphabetically by column down, then across right.

The remaining 32 are arranged to the left, most in order, some not. Nothing special about any of them - a mix of installed tools, folder names, etc., but also separately arranged more-or-less alphabetically.

This appears to be a software bug, failure to fix the array limits of all the screen icons (why only half are sorted?) or the addresses of them. No particular reason to include some in the sort and ignore the others that I can see.

My email address: Moderator note: PII removed

I am a retired software engineering professor: Moderator note: PII removed

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Desktop, Start, and personalization | Desktop
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  1. Emma1-N 13,430 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-10-07T02:55:11.1+00:00

    Welcome William Barrett,

    Please note that our forum is a public platform, and we will modify your question to hide your personal information in the description. Kindly ensure that you hide any personal or organizational information the next time you post an error or other details to protect personal data.  

    Thank you for providing such a detailed description of the issue.

    Before I assume there is a problem with the icon sorting logic itself, I'd like to narrow down a couple of details:

    Are all 69 items located directly on the Desktop, or are some of them shortcuts that come from the "Public Desktop" folder?

    • Press "Windows + R", type: shell:desktop> then press Enter.
      • Check whether all affected icons appear in that folder.
      • When you right-click an empty area of the Desktop and select "View", is "Auto arrange icons" enabled or disabled?
    • Does the same behavior occur if you temporarily switch to "Large icons" and then back to "Medium icons"?

    As a quick test, please also try refreshing the Desktop icon layout:

    • Right-click an empty area of the Desktop.
    • Select Sort by > Name
    • Press F5 to refresh the Desktop.
    • Sign out of Windows and sign back in.

    Looking forward to your update.

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