Why am I losing items?

I am starting to build my first home. I have had a particular problem several times, and it has cost me an item (and money) each time it occurs. I am hoping somebody can tell me what I am doing wrong, or what I can do to recover my items.

Let's say, for example, I create a nice flat prim for a floor. Then I drop a chair from my inventory onto the floor. Now, I can drag the chair around to position it. But sometimes, while I am dragging the chair, it will disappear. I have no idea where it has gone. On one or two occasions, I found my item ten or twenty meters away, perhaps on my neighbors property. But more often than not, I am unable to see my item at all.

This occured twice again tonight. The second time ocurred while I was sitting on the chair while I was editing it. All of a sudden I noticed that I was standing on top of a mountain near my home. Thinking that my chair may be embedded within the mountain, I rotated my camera directly above myself and dragged a large selection box around myself and about 20m around myself.

Lo and behold, my chair was indeed embedded within this mountain. Since I had it selected I raised it up to the summit and collected it.

Why does this occur suddenly and so frequently? It seemed like once it even occured while I was manually editing the position or rotation of an item. Suddenly it disappeared or moved into a radical new postion. This is so frustrating it makes me less excited about building.

Persephone Milk

Several possibilities:

1. Packetloss. Your connection isn't liking the massive broadband nature of this world.
   
2. That bug they reportedly fixed in 1.5.6. It's in the preview, it just hasn't been released to the wild yet.
   
3. You're dragging the arrows too close to the edges of the screen. I realize that by dragging close to the edges the camera "moves" automatically for you, but it's buggy, and really shouldn't be relied on.

I've had this happen to me several times when I first starting making things but I assumed it was a slip of the hand or something. I've sent half made things into hills, other people's houses, and possibly into neighbouring sims! And I regularly find others people's plywood bits on my land too. I think it happens to everyone.

Yeah, that happens to me sometimes, due to the fact that my viewing angle is so close to the axis I'm dragging the object on. Try using the camera controls to reposition your camera before you drag somethign. When you're dragging an object horizontally (on the X or Y axes) always look down on the object. When you're dragging vertically (on the Z axis), always look at the object from the side.

Thank you.

Is there a way to locate and/or collect items if you don't know where they are? I have lost several hundred $L worth of stuff this way.

Persephone Milk

Eh, well if they fly in a neighbor sim you can try to track them on your minimap... following the general direction you "think" you have sent them to, and trying to locate them (items that you own appear on the map in bright blue slittle spots). I managed to find some items back this way sometimes... and sometimes not. (*is a winner at using the coordinates box rather than the arrows, and regularly typing too many numbes in them, hehe*) It's annoying though.

Because I'm stealing them from your inventory while you sleep.

This is a very good tip. Look for the light blue dots on your minimap. Also, there's a limit to how far you can accidentally drag something. At a guess I think SL will keep you from dragging something that's more than, say, 50 or 60m from your camera position. So fly around the area where you were building.

If you can't find your missing items there, maybe they were autoreturned to your inventory. Check the "Lost and Found" folder, the "Objects" folder, and failing that, the "Trash" folder.