Comments on: Finder: Working effectively in Column View

By: joe

joe — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 07:24:32 +0000

excellent tips here. thanks!

By: kenji

kenji — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:18:45 +0000

Love the option click tip - that was the reason why I never used the column view

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:18:41 +0000

Nope, Tab still does nothing for me! Indeed, I can already select filenames in the next column with the keyboard, without pressing Tab (assuming the selected item in the current column is a folder, of course).

By: Mario Grgic

Mario Grgic — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:44:51 +0000

Note that pressing tab does not behave the same way as pressing right arrow. Tab only gives focus to the next column. If you now type first few letter of a file it will get selected.

Also, ESC takes you back to the previous column.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 23 May 2008 04:39:14 +0000

@Mario: Tab doesn’t work for me; nothing happens.

I think the reason 1 happens to work is that the Finder assumes you want to highlight the nearest item to 1 alphabetically, which is _usually_ at the top of the list. However, if you don’t sort alphabetically, or your list happens to have a file/folder starting with 0, then you won’t select the first item.

By: Mario Grgic

Mario Grgic — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:54:49 +0000

Even faster way to navigate in the column view is to use Tab key to move the focus to the next column (instead of right arrow key), and to type (usually only first letter is enough) of the file/folder to select it.

Also, 1 moves you to the first file in the column.

By: Aubrey

Aubrey — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:46:51 +0000

Does anyone know of an apple script that will resize the name column to the length of the file name?

By: Alan

Alan — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:38:12 +0000

Love the double click; wish it was automatic!