Was that a double or two singles?

Have you noticed that sometimes when you double-click on an icon on your Desktop, rather than the program running or the file opening, all that happens is that the icon's name is highlighted and the text has a border.  So what's happening? 

As you know, a double-click opens an item.  What you may not know is that Windows interprets two single clicks as Rename.  So if the two clicks of the double-click aren't close enough together Windows thinks you want to rename the file or program icon.  When this happens, most people click away from the icon and try again.  In fact all you need to do is to double-click on the picture part of the icon.

The two single clicks only work if your mouse pointer is on the text part of the icon.  If this happens to you more often than you want, when you are going to double-click make sure your mouse pointer is over the picture part of the icon, rather than the text.  Then if you do two single clicks nothing will happen and you can just try again. 

You could also try slowing down the speed of the double-clicks so they can be farther apart and still be treated as a double by Windows.

To slow down the double-click speed:
 - Start menu, Settings, Control Panel
 - Double-click on Mouse
 - In the Double-click area, drag the slider to the left
 - Test by double-clicking on the little folder on the right
 - Adjust as needed
 - Click on OK

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