"View more Emoticons....."

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When making a post, I find I can only use an emoticon from the View More Emoticons feature once, after which this facility disappears. More commonly, it even disappears if I so much as Left Click, or press the "Enter" key, without actually having selected an emoticon from this section. For some reason, the emoticons in question end up in a window on my Desktop page, and can only be retrieved by clicking on the 'x' in the top right corner. In order to get to the Desktop page, I have to close all open tabs, and thus lose any post I may be in the middle of making. Is this meant to happen, or could it be an issue with the way my own computer is set up?

Edit: Just realized that this issue can to some extent be obviated by using "Copy and Paste" (saving the unfinished text to memory before exiting to Desktop, then pasting the retrieved material to the restored thread), but isn't there a more straightforward, less time-consuming solution?

That's one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Normally, the "more emoticons" window is displayed and remains active until closed, allowing you to select as many as you want from it.

Sometimes it can seem disabled and not appear when View more Emoticons is clicked, due to the way that GUIs (or the Windows GUI, anyway) behave: when a window loses focus (a mouse click or keypress on another window) it will move behind others, sometimes out of sight and clicking View more Emoticons again will apparently do nothing because the window is already being displayed - but not necessarily on top of others.
With the Windows GUI, repeatedly pressing Alt-Tab will cycle through the active windows where you'll find it's still there and functional. Other GUIs will have a similar mechanism.

Are you using a GUI which provides several desktops? It may be that for some reason related to the GUI, the window doesn't appear on the active desktop.

Many thanks for your help.

Using the "Alt-Tab" method, I can now compose a post incorporating numerous "additional" emoticons, without having to return to the Desktop screen, close tabs or resort to cumbersome, time-consuming saving and retrieving techniques. The extra emoticons still go AWOL at the slightest provocation, but can be brought back to base instantly!

I don't think I have several desktops by the way, though I can't be sure. After only 3 months of PC ownership, 90%+ of this business is still terra incognita to me.

Losing one's emoticons is no laughing matter. I can't even claim for it on my household contents insurance policy. That might be because I don't have one, however.

One way of avoiding this rigmarole is to simply close the additional emoticons window once you've used it, on a per-post basis.
At least then, when you next click on "View more emoticons", that window will appear on top of the others.

The way that windows apparently come and go at random is one aspect of working with a GUI that can be confusing for people new to them - but there is a pattern to it.
Honestly, there is...