[bowwowman]

hey all,

I know I've seen this somewhere before, but how do you remove an icon from the dock for an item that no longer exists.....

ie... I had an alias to a folder of documents in my dock.
I permanately/completely deleted the actual folder from my HD, and now it shows as a big " ? " in the dock and will not go away......either by dragging it off or right clicking "remove from dock", so how do I get rid of it for good ?

ps.... a terminal.app solution is ok too, as I am moderately comfortable with it

TIA for the help

[Chuckit]

Delete the item's entry in com.apple.dock.plist. Or just delete the plist itself to reset the entire dock.

[bowwowman]

thanks for the quick response, Chuck

I tried deleting the entire plist, but that caused the dock to revert to it's default configuration.......not at all what I wanted to do....fortunately I was able to restore it from my back-up

I found the data string within the plist file, and deleted it in plist editor, but that didnt make the icon go away.......is this what you were referring to ?

perhaps I should log out or restart ?????

[CatOne]

You could delete the plist, then re-add the things you had in your dock. Use a screen shot to help you remember what was there.

This should take maybe 30 seconds?

[Chuckit]

Oh, sorry. To be more explicit: Delete the entry for the item from the plist file and then go into Terminal and type killall Dock. Then it should reload without the haunted icon.

[bowwowman]

Chuck:
got it done, thanks again for the help !

Cat, under normal circumstances, your suggestion works for most people, but my dock is heavily customized to my workload and tweaked just the way I like/need it for me to be 100% productive. Resetting it would have taken considerable time & effort But thanks anyway !