MacMost Now 836: Finder Column View

The Finder's Column View may be the most versatile and useful. It allows you to see the current folder, and ones above it. It also gives you a preview of the file selected. You can quickly move between folders with arrow keys and it is easy to move files from one folder to another.

Comments: 11 Responses to “MacMost Now 836: Finder Column View”

    James
    11 years ago

    Thanks Gary,

    I miss the small triangle that was in SL but lost in Lion and ML.
    The preview column (especially with video and on a network drive) can be really slow and you have to wait ages for finder to return to you once the video preview windows is there. In snow leopard you could just click on the little triangle to shut off the preview on those occasions. Now you have to Cmd J and uncheck options as appropriate. Bit of a step back.
    Love all your videos and thanks.

    Vasco Galvão
    11 years ago

    Than you for all your videos that have shown me almost everything I know about OS X.

    Having long filenames, when I double click on the column separator to make the column wider, the result is just the opposite! The columns became narrow.
    If the I click again, I get no further reaction, only by dragging the separators I can make the columns wider.

    John255
    11 years ago

    Gary,
    This is one of your all time greatest videos tips.
    Thank you ever so much.
    Just what I needed.
    Amazing that Mac keeps all these goodies nearly secret.
    John255

    John255
    11 years ago

    Gary,
    Once you have the column withs set how can you make it remain that way instead of having to set it up each time it is opened?
    Thanks.
    John255

      11 years ago

      Hold down Option when dragging. This changes the width of all columns at once, and also it is setting the default column width at the same time.

        Mr. Luigi
        11 years ago

        Gary, I know that tip was in your video, but I want to say, THANK YOU! I sometimes must use fairly long file names to keep things unambiguous and speed up workflow. That often makes the relatively skinny default column width much too small. Yes, sometimes that pushes the left most column off the screen, but it's worth it to me to see the entire file name. Oh, I confess. In addition to my 15" MBP, I have a 27" Cinema Display. Column width is not an issue. :-) MacMost.com is MacDelicious!

    lou zecchin
    11 years ago

    Great tip . I enjoy all the tips you give. The tutorials have really helped me learn the computer even tho I started a few years ago at age 62.

    John Pollard
    11 years ago

    When I do tried this view the lines are thick scroll bars and there's no double clicking action. What's with this?

      11 years ago

      It sounds like you have changed your System Preferences to always show the scroll bars (under General). So you have two options: turn off this preference and go back to the default, or just use the very bottom of the scroll bars to drag left or right to change the column widths.

    Paul Samaras
    11 years ago

    Gary I'm new to mac's and find your videos a great help. A frustrating thing in this column view for me is when I need to look at sought or add a photo image to a email or just to move a photo file the icons are so small that they are useless. I know I can select an image and see it next to the file column but when I have say 300 images and want to find one it's slow and difficult. Question : is there a way to increase the size of the icons (jpegs) in column view?

      11 years ago

      One of the great things about Finder views is it is so quick and easy to switch between them. So when you need to do this, switch to icon view.

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