I have copied all the Attachments under Messages from my Library to a new folder. With Attachments, there are many sub-folders and sub-sub-folders, etc.? How can I simply extract all the files from every subfolder and create a new folder with just files in a single folder?
Thanks!
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David
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How Do I Extract Files From Multiple Sub-folders and Put In a Single Folder?
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One way to do that is with a simple search. Go to the Attachments folder in the Finder. Then Command+f to search. At the top you should see "Search:" and then "This Mac" and "Attachments." Make sure you select the latter so you are just searching in this folder.
Then enter some search criteria that will get you everything you want. You could do "Kind is Image" for all images. Or, if you really want everything something like "File Size is greater than 0 KB" will work.
Then select all of those files found. You can do that by selecting the first one and then Command+a.
Now you don't want to move those files, right? You want them to stay in ~/Library/Messages/Attachments so as not mess up your Messages app. So create a new folder in another Finder window, and then hold the Option key down and drag them all to the new folder. You should see a + mark under the cursor as you drag, indicating the items will be copied, not moved.
In your case though, after you do the search you can simply use Quick Look or Finder preview (View, Show Preview) to look at the images and drag the ones you want to import into Photos directly into Photos. That will import and copy those images very neatly.