Long time user made 2 rookie mistakes

I was in a hurry to see some downloaded pictures from an email. Before i knew it I had dragged both the Downloads folder and the Documents folder off the Dock....pooooooof a pufff of smoke and they were gone. How can get the bacK? They had stuff in them I need. I went to TM Machine and found yesterdays stuff, be I could not figure out how the move TM stuff back to the Dock. Help...I got new meds today and they are knocking me out...I will read replies tomorrow

Open the Finder

Drag the Downloads and Documents folders to the dock

@dogbreath If that is the worst rookie computing mistake you've made you have indeed lead a charmed life. member the Red Green Show Handyman Motto "If it ain't broke you ain't tryin'":Mischievous

To clarify Tom's answer a bit: dragging folders off the Dock does nothing at all to the actual folders. All the icons on the dock are "shortcuts" as Windows people might say. The folders are still in your Home folder and can be dragged back into the right side of the Dock.

Double-click on the hard drive icon, double-click Users, double-click the Home folder for your account, and there they are. Drag them into the Dock (don't let go until they are in the dock, don't move them onto the desktop). You may need to right-click them and set it to "show as folder" to get it looking the way you want.

It's rather easy to accidentally drag something off of the Dock. some people don't even notice the "puff of smoke". But, as noted above, it's not really gone.

Thanks all for your help...folders are back in the Dock...like it never happened. I was trying to do stuff too quickly before going to bed.

Just remember that the icons in the dock are just shortcuts to those items in the Finder. If anything is missing from the dock, it's no big deal, just drag it in from a Finder window. If the item is missing from the Finder, then you've got a problem.

Dogbreath said:

I was trying to do stuff too quickly before going to bed.

Click to expand...

Never a good idea.