[X4U] Finder Question

[John Erdman]

Ed-
	I'm a bit surprised that no one has suggested that you use Automator  
to solve your problem

  It can do all your searching for you and then move the results into  
a folder of your choice.  Even if you don't know Automator, it's  
pretty simple to set up an automated scheme to do exactly what you  
want. The learning curve for doing that is much less than the time  
you've spent writing to this list. And for someone of your background  
it should be a snap to learn.

I'm not very skilled at Automator but I can see quickly how to set it  
up to do the job with about 20 minutes set up work.

Regards,
John


On Nov 22, 2008, at 4:35 PM, Ed Gould wrote:
>>
> Alas I am about out of will on this but one last attempt to explain  
> and then lets all please drop this as it obvious there are no good  
> solutions for what I want to do.
> I get *LOTS* of emails with pictures either attached or imbedded in  
> them. What happen to me was that I thought when I dragged the  
> picture to a general folder (that I have) the window that I was  
> dragging the pictures to was a folder (unknown to me) that contained  
> literally 100++ folders. When I dropped the file(s) I *THOUGHT* I  
> was putting them into my folder that I set aside for such things,  
> instead they went to the *WRONG* folder(s in my case). so my 100+  
> pictures ended up in 100+ folders (like I said before it seemed to  
> spread them all over the place for some reason).
> The folders they ended up in were incorrect and my goal was to find  
> the pictures and put them into the correct folder so I could later  
> sort through which ones I wanted to keep and ones I want to delete.
>
> My initial (and I consider it still valid and best) idea was to  
> identify which folders had the pictures and to move the pictures to  
> my work folder so I could decide then what I wanted to keep/delete.
>
> My idea was to use a facility (spotlight or ?) to find the folders  
> that contained the pictures and to move the pictures to my work  
> folder for later processing. There are side issues that are sort of  
> germane that the folders are huge (10K+ files each) and opening each  
> one takes a bit of time on my computer (and yes I have subdivided  
> the folders but the folders grow and never shrink). Each folder to  
> open takes anywhere from 45-120 seconds to open and the amount of  
> time to open each folder is at best tedious. So to not to have to  
> look through 100++ folders my attempt was to open the subset of  
> folders that contain only the items I want. That limits the time I  
> need to sit at the computer.
>
> I thought I took the simplest route maybe not but it still seems the  
> easiest way to just open the folders I want (if I know the folder  
> (path)) it is a straight shot and not having to hunt through every  
> folder seemed to be the quickest way to correct my error. Yes it was  
> my error to begin with and not knowing that I was making an error  
> till after the drag and drop was done. Yes in the future I will  
> attempt to be more careful but again it was a stupid mistake that  
> never should have happened but the point was it did.