iMovie (or another program) is missing from the Dock. How do I get it back?

Top Ten reasons iMovie is missing from the Dock:

1. iMovie crawled out the CD-ROM drive and jumped off the desk. It's hiding under your bed looking for food and a place to hide. Shake out your shoes before putting them on!
2. iMovie switched health-care providers (get it? Dock?)
3. To get to the other side. Looks like he succeeded.
4. They don't call him 'iMovie' for nothing!
5. iCal reminded him of an urgent appointment across town. Dashboard says he still stuck in traffic.
6. You haven't been running iMovie in awhile, so he went home: sad, alone, feeling neglected. Stupid iTunes! Hogging all the attention!
7. Mail sent him to Hawaii as an attachment. Aloha, iMovie.
8. I'm sorry, but call back tomorrow. Someone isn't missing until 24-hours have passed...
9. The Panther keeps looking at him funny. He's already eaten all the other fat binaries.
10. He heard there's a Leopord coming. Hide!!!

Actually, you probably accidently pulled iMovie out of the Dock, especially if you didn't know that's how you remove icons you never use from the Dock. The Dock is that row of icons at the bottom or side of the screen where you can run the Finder, Mail, Safari, and open the trash.

If a program you like "disappears" from the Dock, don't panic. You probably didn't delete it forever. The icon in the Dock is not the program. It is only a shortcut or alias to the real program. On MacOS X, programs are installed in the Applications folder on your system hard drive, usually called "Macintosh HD". If you delete a program from the Applications folder, THEN maybe it's gone, but what usually happens is this:

Pick an icon in your Dock that you don't use often, like iChat or QuickTime Player. It doesn't matter which one; any icon except the Finder. Click on the icon and hold the mouse button down (don't let go) and drag the icon away from the Dock. You should see the icon lift off the Dock and turn into a little puff of smoke or "wad of paper" icon. I think this is meant to look like you're "trashing" or throwing away the icon. If you let the mouse button go while the icon looks like a wad of paper, the app will vanish from the Dock. This is actually easy to do on accident if you're fumbling with the mouse and click on the wrong icon. One quick flick of the wrist and poof, you've pulled the iMovie icon right off the Dock.

Or if you control-click the iMovie icon in the Dock and accidently uncheck the "Keep in Dock" item, it will vanish from the Dock. That's the other way applications "just go away".

Here's how you put the icon back in the Dock.

Switch to the Finder (click on it in the Dock). Use the Go menu, and pick Applications. This opens the Applications folder for you in an easy way. Or you can click on your hard drive's icon on the Desktop and inside at the top level will be Applications. Inside the Applications folder, scroll around and find the missing application, like iMovie. Drag its icon on to the Dock and it's back in place.

Or if your running Tiger (10.4) there's the Spotlight icon in the upper-right hand corner of your screen. This is just another way to do the same thing. Spotlight is a quick-and-dirty way to search your hard drive for files. If, for example, you can't find iMovie or don't know where OS X keeps it, Spotlight comes in handy. Click on the blue magnifying glass (or type Command+space) and in the text box that appears start typing the name of what you're looking for. Like: iMov... by the time you type the "v", Spotlight probably already has it in a list of choices. The next step you can do 2 ways. 1) Click on "Show All" and in the window that appears drag the iMovie icon to the dock. It will stay there in the Dock until you or one of your other personalities drags it out of the Dock again. 2) Click on iMovie in the Spotlight menu that pops down. This will cause iMovie to run. It will then appear in the Dock. You have to click on it with the mouse and hold the button down until a pop-up menu appears, then pick "Keep in Dock". Otherwise when you quit iMovie it will vanish again.

Now if iMovie is actually missing from the Applications folder and you can't find it with Spotlight, it may really be gone.

First ask yourself if you ever really had it. Maybe your Mac didn't come with it.

Second, you can buy iLife from Apple for a nominal cost, which has iMovie and all the other iApps. That way you get the latest version, and it's easy to install. That's the simplest way to reinstall it.

To reinstall just one program from the Install Discs that come with your Mac is not as easy as it sounds. You need a program called Pacifist to install Apple software one .pkg file at a time and another program call TinkerTool to reveal the hidden .pkg files on the Install Discs. iLife .pkg files are usually on Disc 2. Consult your local nerd for further assistance.

If your Mac came with dics labeled "System Restore" you can try those to see if they will let you restore just one missing program, like iMovie. As a last resort, you can reinstall OS X but choose "Archive & Install" in the Options screen. That's like killing a fly with a Volkswagen, but if you've exhausted all other options (get it? Volkswagen? exhausted?) sometimes it's time break out the car keys and gun the ignition.

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