Question mark icon in the MacOS Dock

Fool Community Help Desk Help with this STUPID computer!
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In this article - Why is There a Question Mark Icon in the Dock on Mac? - it says this:

How to Fix a Question Mark Icon in Mac Dock

To fix the question mark icon, you must find the original item that it was linked to, and drag it back into the Mac Dock:

  1. Hit Command+Spacebar to open Spotlight on Mac (or click the magnifying glass icon in the menu bar)
  2. Search for the name or the file/folder to find it on the Mac
  3. Select the Spotlight result with the app/file and hold down the Command key and hit return to open the containing folder
  4. Drag the app or file/folder into the Mac Dock as usual
  5. Remove the question mark icon from the Dock as you would remove any other item

It’s also possible that you will not find the app you are looking for when searching with Spotlight, in which case you’ll need reinstall the app, whether from the Mac App Store, the app developer, or where ever the app is available or where from originally obtained.

But what if you don’t know what the original item was?

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Likely unused, or like me at times, forgotten, I saw some after coming up in Sequoia, the apps had been moved off as they were incompatible, just as well, helped me see what I needed to update, I still come across apps, utilities I’d likely tried, didn’t really use, now they show up as ‘exec’ black icons, and I can maybe chase down an update… Most I had lost interest in, tho. I still fine files, info that I can’t open without doing some chasing, old QuickDraw files, and such I hadn’t looked at in ages, some I can pull the text out using Word, others require more digging… One can get lost chasing those files… Likely not unique to the Mac as other OS’s likely face the same problem, backward compatibility… Generally I make a Duplicate to play with so I don’t destroy the original… Lately I’m finding old .tif files that are hard to open, so another chase to save the images… Time marches on…

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