Tip: Retrieving the Prodigal Window

Have you ever worked with an external monitor on your notebook, with the desktop and applications spread out across both monitors,  then undocked the notebook and half your apps are “off the screen”? You can’t move them back on the screen because you can’t see where to place the mouse cursor to drag the windows back to the visible desktop. And if you quit and re-launch them, they go right back to where they were! Very annoying.

I helped out a coworker with this tip today and thought I’d document it. It dates back to Windows 3.1 / 3.11, back when the menu in the upper-left corner of a window was used much more. It’s still there in Windows 7, but no one seems to know about it any more.

To move a window back to where you can see it:

1. Use Alt-Tab to bring the wayward window into focus. (Even though you can’t see it, it’s still in focus.)
2. Hit Alt-Space to activate the upper-left menu.
3. Hit “m” to select the Move command. The cursor, if you could see it, turns into a four-way arrow.
4. Using the cursor keys only, move the window back to where you can see it. Use any other key or mouse click to return the cursor to normal.

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