[X4U] Finder Question

[Andrew Swanson]

Ed,
Sorry, I haven't been following this thread closely. It seems to me  
that people are giving you much more complicated solutions than what  
you need. Here's what I would do.

1) In the finder open (or create and open) the folder that I want the  
files to go into.
2) Using spotlight (the dropdown menu in the upper right corner)  
search for the files (from your description I presume you know  
something about the names of the files?)
3) Once spotlight starts filling with results, select "Show All" (This  
will open a new window).
4) Near the top right of this window, click the little "+" by the Save  
button and set "Kind" to "Images", just to restrict the list.
Then either
5A) Drag the desired files from this window to the window you opened  
in step 1.
or
5B) right click (or control click) on one desired file and select  
"Open Enclosing Folder". Then you can move it from there.


If you go with 5A you never even need to know what folder the file  
originally ended up in. Notice that the file remains in the search  
list after you drag it, but it really has been moved to your desired  
folder (you'll be able to see it there.) Another advantage of this is  
that you never need to open the huge folders.

In step 4, you might want to make the list even shorter. One way to do  
this would be to set a date range by clicking "+" twice more and  
selecting "Date Created" is "before" (choose a date) for one of them  
and "Date Created" is "after" (choose a date) for the other. Be  
careful about the "+" changing to a "-".

Anyway, let me know if this is helpful at all.

   Andy

On Nov 22, 2008, at 3:35 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.
>
> Now back to the other OS X issues.
>
> Ed
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> X4U mailing list
> X4U at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
> http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/x4u
>
> Seven Cent Deals - Great legacy stuff Great Legacy Price
> http://www.drbott.com/prod/db.lasso?cat=Seven+Cent+Deal