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Folder behavior
#18523 10/18/11 09:10 AM
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grelber Offline OP
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It used to be that if one dragged a file/document from a folder or Desktop to another folder and held it over the latter folder until same highlighted, it would also open that folder so that one could place it where one wanted in the contents of the folder. Moreover, that procedure could be successively repeated if the folder contained other/embedded folders.

This no longer seems to be possible. I cannot find any preference setting which might allow this action (which was a default or SOP in OS 9).

Am I missing something?


Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18525 10/18/11 09:30 AM
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Jon

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Re: Folder behavior
jchuzi #18529 10/18/11 11:17 AM
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Thanks.
Given my apparent misunderstanding of spring-loaded folders in another thread, I had neglected to re-check that option in Finder's Preferences.

Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18530 10/18/11 11:39 AM
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Whenever I have upgraded the OS, I have made it a point to go through ALL preference options in Finder and System Preferences. That way, I get to see everything that is available and also become familiar with how these things are organized (they sometimes change from one OS to another). Perhaps you have already done so, but if not, I urge you to spend some time at this task.


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Re: Folder behavior
jchuzi #18531 10/18/11 11:58 AM
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Absolutely. I've done so on several occasions*, the first upon turning on the iMac, before installing any third-party applications, etc.

*Setting and re-setting depending on whether I've liked the results of my choices.

Re: Folder behavior
jchuzi #18538 10/18/11 02:49 PM
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Very good strategy. Not only for customizing but also for understanding what options one can use and which can vary from old OS version to new OS version.

Last edited by macnerd10; 10/18/11 02:50 PM.

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Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18576 10/19/11 06:31 AM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
Thanks.
Given my apparent misunderstanding of spring-loaded folders in another thread, I had neglected to re-check that option in Finder's Preferences.


Note that if you leave spring-loaded folders disabled, it can still be manually activated when needed by pressing the spacebar. I generally prefer this mode so I don't accidentally trigger the spring-loaded folders when I don't want to.


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Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18670 10/24/11 05:50 PM
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I thought this problem had been resolved (beyond my ken how).
But it isn't.
Create a folder; put on Desktop.
Create a document or cut-and-paste an article or download a .eml document; then put in folder.
Drag item back to Desktop, which then sees it snap to upper left corner of screen; do with more items from folder, and they stack up in upper left corner of screen.
Drag one or all to another spot on Desktop and they stay where they're dropped.
Put back in folder and then drag and drop onto Desktop and they now stay where they're dropped.
Ergo: First time back out of folder to Desktop and SNAP; successive times out, normal behavior.
This occurs in my user account and in test account; therefore a system-wide issue.
Apple support has never heard of this behavior and has not been able to offer a solution.
Reminder: This behavior occurred 10.7.1 and now in 10.7.2.

Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18673 10/24/11 07:42 PM
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I'm not sure exactly how/where this is set in Lion, but that shouldn't be too hard to figure. You might want to check what is set in the Finder's Arrange by pull down menu found (so far) at the bottom of the View>Show View Options window?
- If it's not None, try that and see if the behavior changes.
- If it doesn't change, or if the menu's already set to None, try changing it to something else and than back to None, testing the Finder behavior after every change.

If that doesn't help or if this particular Finder setting cannot be found, please post back here and we'll try to come up with something else. tongue


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Re: Folder behavior
alternaut #18674 10/24/11 08:31 PM
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Been down all those roads and then some.
Nothing seems to work.
And the senior Apple advisor I spent 1.5 hours with on the telephone this morning couldn't come up with anything either (except take me through some fantastic voyages, setting up root access accounts and stuff which quite frankly scares the hell out me — and I can't figure out how to get rid of the Other account set up in some invisible fashion).
This should be a trivial problem, but it sure isn't.

Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18677 10/24/11 09:24 PM
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OK, let's deal with that invisible account later, and focus on the Finder's foibles for now. Having jumped there from Mac OS 9 in one fell swoop you may not have realized this, but Lion's Finder options to arrange files in various views have been extended compared to previous OS X versions. Your problem may be related to one of these options, and it would therefore be useful to be aware of them. They are described in How to arrange and sort files in Lion Finder.

The solutions offered in the following link may or may not apply, but it's worth a shot: how to stop lion re-arranging my desktop upon startup. Btw, do all Finder windows behave the same way? It would be interesting to know if this includes windows with different default settings like Icon/List/Column etc.


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Re: Folder behavior
alternaut #18678 10/25/11 12:00 AM
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grelber Offline OP
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I was on the phone for another hour with a senior Apple advisor, again to no avail (but we got the Root User account removed).

He couldn't replicate the problem on his machines; the only solution he could suggest was to reinstall the OS and go from there — of course necessitating my purchase of an external drive to use with Time Machine (so half again as much as I paid for the iMac). I'm certainly not interested in major surgery for a tiny paper cut.
If this problem has no reasonable solution, then I guess I'll just have to put up with the inconvenience — but it's pretty shabby of Apple not to be able to deal with such a trivial problem. (And people wonder why I prefer OS 9.)

As I noted, I've been down all those roads. I've examined all varieties of file arrangements/views which are offered; so I am intimately aware of them. (After trying for over 5 minutes to access that first MacWorld article, it still wouldn't show up. Another 10 minutes and all that showed up was a page header. [There must be way too many graphics in the article; that's what usually slows down the process from all I can tell.] So I gave up.)

All folder views (icon/list/column) give the same result: New documents removed from the folder snap to upper left corner of the screen.

Last edited by grelber; 10/25/11 12:41 AM. Reason: Additional info
Re: Folder behavior
alternaut #18681 10/25/11 05:16 AM
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When grelber first posted this issue I suggested that it might be .DS_Store file related, but now he's reported that it follows him to a test user account.

Do you know whether .DS_Store files are account specific or systemic?


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Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18682 10/25/11 05:37 AM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
I Ergo: First time back out of folder to Desktop and SNAP; successive times out, normal behavior.

Originally Posted By: grelber
This occurs in my user account and in test account; therefore a system-wide issue.

It's a bug.
We can't fix that.
End of discussion. tongue

[seriously, there is a similar issue when first opening a window after login (its size and location isn't right under certain conditions.... close and reopen, and it's back where it should be). OSX isn't perfect... but it's so much better than OS9 in so many ways, that no amount of whining can change that.]

Re: Folder behavior
artie505 #18683 10/25/11 05:52 AM
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.DS_Store files are folder specific. Each folder gets one, and they are used for that folder no matter which user is logged in. A problem in a .DS_Store file would persist for any user, so it's not impossible that's the problem.


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Re: Folder behavior
Hal Itosis #18689 10/25/11 08:24 AM
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grelber Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: Hal Itosis
Originally Posted By: grelber
I Ergo: First time back out of folder to Desktop and SNAP; successive times out, normal behavior.

Originally Posted By: grelber
This occurs in my user account and in test account; therefore a system-wide issue.

It's a bug.
We can't fix that.
End of discussion. tongue

After spending hours on the phone with Apple (at so-called senior advisor level) I get the same impression.

Originally Posted By: Hal Itosis
[seriously, there is a similar issue when first opening a window after login (its size and location isn't right under certain conditions.... close and reopen, and it's back where it should be). OSX isn't perfect... but it's so much better than OS9 in so many ways, that no amount of whining can change that.]

I thought that issue had been fixed with 10.7.2 update.
And whining at least releases a bit of the pent-up tension and frustration.

Re: Folder behavior
tacit #18690 10/25/11 08:31 AM
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Originally Posted By: tacit
.DS_Store files are folder specific. Each folder gets one, and they are used for that folder no matter which user is logged in. A problem in a .DS_Store file would persist for any user, so it's not impossible that's the problem.

If so, is there a reasonable fix for this? (By which I mean, as usual, one that I might be able to implement with buggering up my machine and without having a nervous breakdown.)
I might add that folders I brought over from my old system don't share this bizarre behavior; ie, newly created documents placed inside do not snap to upper left corner upon being taken out for the first time.
The same seems to hold true for folders created on the new iMAC which have been around for a couple weeks (which makes the problem even more interesting ~ complex).

Re: Folder behavior
tacit #18691 10/25/11 08:49 AM
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I don't know the root of the problem is, but I can list some things that it isn't.

First, it isn't SOP. I've never seen that problem, neither on my machine, nor mentioned in any forum I read, except in this thread.

The fist time you drag something to the desktop, it goes to one place, but the second and later times it goes somewhere else. Ergo, it's not anything to do with your View Options.

Each folder has its own .DS_Store file. Each user has their own Desktop folder, with its own .DS_Store file. A new user would have a new folder and a new file, both uncorrupted and with correct permissions. If the problem occurs as described with a new user, it's not a .DS_Store issue.

On MacOS, there was a separate invisible Desktop folder on each disk volume, and Finder merged their contents on the fly to put all their icons on the desktop. That caused numerous problems, some of which are similar to the ones described. (You could not easily tell which volume an item on the desktop was actually on. If you dragged it to a folder, even a folder on the desktop, you were implicitly dragging it to whatever volume that folder was on. If that meant it was going to a different volume, you got a copy. Otherwise, you got a move.) But OS X doesn't handle the desktop that way. Instead, each user gets a prominently visible Desktop folder right at the top of their home folder, and whatever's in that folder is what they see on the desktop. There's no longer any merging of folders from different volumes. Besides, if I understand your complaint about being asked to buy an external disk for backup, you don't have any other disk volumes anyway. So that's not it.

Notice that I'm scrupulously distinguishing between "Desktop", with a capital "D", and "desktop" with a lower-case "d". "Desktop" is a folder, not much different from any other folder. "desktop" is the area on your screen behind all your windows. The connection between them is that they contain the same items. Whatever you put in one appears in both.

"Desktop", like any other folder, can be viewed in Finder through a window. In fact, you can open any number of windows into the same folder, and they'll all show the same items. (Use ⌘^O to "Open in New Window". Or just use ⌘N repeatedly to get several windows, then navigate each of them to the desired folder.) MacOS couldn't do that, because it failed to distinguish between a folder and a window into that folder.

Each window can be put into one of four "views" (List View, Icon View, Column View, or Cover Flow View). Notice that view is an attribute of a window, not a folder. Each of these views has its own independent "View Options". The desktop itself can be thought of as yet another window, differing from other windows in that it always looks into the Desktop folder, and is always in a fifth view (Desktop View), which naturally has its View Options as well. (The five views don't have completely independent options. Desktop and Column view do, but there's a lot of crosstalk between List and Coverflow, and both of those share Arrange/Sort by... with Icon view.)

When I look at the View Options for Desktop View, there is no "Arrange by ..." option. (This is one of the differences between Desktop View and the very similar Icon View.) Try as I might, I cannot find any option that makes new icons appear in the upper LEFT of the desktop. If "Sort by..." is set to anything but "none", icons arrange themselves starting from the upper RIGHT.

If I open a window on the Desktop folder, and put that window in Icon View, and set Icon View's View Options to "none"/"none", then new items appear in the first available position in that window starting from the upper LEFT. Is that maybe what you're seeing? Do you have a window open into the Desktop while you're doing your tests? The Desktop and desktop are using different views, and while they're displaying the same items they will generally display them differently. But that doesn't get the icons stacked up on top of each other, so I guess that's not it either.


BTW: You really do need that external drive for Time Machine. They're cheap nowadays. You can get gobs of disk space for under $100. Without backup, you will someday lose all your data, including the irreplaceable stuff.

Re: Folder behavior
ganbustein #18692 10/25/11 09:13 AM
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grelber Offline OP
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Thanks for the thorough exposé, some of which I can follow.

Originally Posted By: ganbustein
The fist time you drag something to the desktop, it goes to one place, but the second and later times it goes somewhere else. Ergo, it's not anything to do with your View Options.

It just doesn't go somewhere else the next time, it stays where I put it.

Originally Posted By: ganbustein
Each folder has its own .DS_Store file. Each user has their own Desktop folder, with its own .DS_Store file. A new user would have a new folder and a new file, both uncorrupted and with correct permissions. If the problem occurs as described with a new user, it's not a .DS_Store issue.

OK, I guess that means we're back to square one?!

Originally Posted By: ganbustein
On MacOS, there was a separate invisible Desktop folder on each disk volume, and Finder merged their contents on the fly to put all their icons on the desktop. That caused numerous problems, some of which are similar to the ones described. (You could not easily tell which volume an item on the desktop was actually on. If you dragged it to a folder, even a folder on the desktop, you were implicitly dragging it to whatever volume that folder was on. If that meant it was going to a different volume, you got a copy. Otherwise, you got a move.) But OS X doesn't handle the desktop that way. Instead, each user gets a prominently visible Desktop folder right at the top of their home folder, and whatever's in that folder is what they see on the desktop. There's no longer any merging of folders from different volumes. Besides, if I understand your complaint about being asked to buy an external disk for backup, you don't have any other disk volumes anyway. So that's not it.
Notice that I'm scrupulously distinguishing between "Desktop", with a capital "D", and "desktop" with a lower-case "d". "Desktop" is a folder, not much different from any other folder. "desktop" is the area on your screen behind all your windows. The connection between them is that they contain the same items. Whatever you put in one appears in both.
"Desktop", like any other folder, can be viewed in Finder through a window. In fact, you can open any number of windows into the same folder, and they'll all show the same items. (Use ⌘^O to "Open in New Window". Or just use ⌘N repeatedly to get several windows, then navigate each of them to the desired folder.) MacOS couldn't do that, because it failed to distinguish between a folder and a window into that folder.

I really don't know what this all means (at least pragmatically).

Originally Posted By: ganbustein
If I open a window on the Desktop folder, and put that window in Icon View, and set Icon View's View Options to "none"/"none", then new items appear in the first available position in that window starting from the upper LEFT. Is that maybe what you're seeing? Do you have a window open into the Desktop while you're doing your tests? The Desktop and desktop are using different views, and while they're displaying the same items they will generally display them differently. But that doesn't get the icons stacked up on top of each other, so I guess that's not it either.

That's not what I'm seeing. The item (icon of the document) snaps to the upper left corner and only about 1/4 quarter of it is visible, just below the menu bar.

Originally Posted By: ganbustein
BTW: You really do need that external drive for Time Machine. They're cheap nowadays. You can get gobs of disk space for under $100. Without backup, you will someday lose all your data, including the irreplaceable stuff.

The Apple Time Machine external drive is $500 here.
I don't know anything about external drives other than the flash/thumb drives I've been using. I wouldn't know good from bad from ugly.
I looked at the Time Machine application which came with my iMac and I understand absolutely nothing about it.
My backups have been solely content-oriented, by which I mean I save my documents on a CD from time to time (but my Toast Titanium won't work here), so I imagine — if I can ever figure out how the CD/DVD burner on this machine works — that I might be able to use that.
I'm waiting for David Pogue's book on Lion for instructions I can understand; if he doesn't have them, then I'm screwed in that regard.

Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18693 10/25/11 09:34 AM
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You can delete .DS_Store files with OnyX. Get version 2.4.1; the next one is still in beta. After installing and launching OnyX, select the Maintenance tab and then click Rebuild (that's where to go for the Snow Leopard version but I assume that the Lion version is the same). After doing this, the folder positions will revert to defaults but you can re-arrange them to your satisfaction. That re-arrangement should stick.


Jon

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Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18694 10/25/11 09:49 AM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
The Apple Time Machine external drive is $500 here.

You should consider shopping at Apple Canada on-line and buy refurbished. Aside from the fact that the items aren't technology from five minutes ago, they are close to buying new - including warranty - just a lot cheaper.

Further, the stuff just arrives at your door and is often free delivery.

I've bought a few things that way and have never been sorry.

ryck


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Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18695 10/25/11 09:51 AM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
I might add that folders I brought over from my old system don't share this bizarre behavior; ie, newly created documents placed inside do not snap to upper left corner upon being taken out for the first time.
The same seems to hold true for folders created on the new iMac which have been around for a couple weeks (which makes the problem even more interesting ~ complex).

Update: If that was true, it isn't anymore. Documents put in old(er) and imported folders exhibit the same behavior — first time move from Desktop to folder and then removal back to Desktop yields the same snapping behavior (and subsequent normal behavior).

Re: Folder behavior
jchuzi #18696 10/25/11 09:58 AM
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Originally Posted By: jchuzi
You can delete .DS_Store files with OnyX. Get version 2.4.1; the next one is still in beta. After installing and launching OnyX, select the Maintenance tab and then click Rebuild (that's where to go for the Snow Leopard version but I assume that the Lion version is the same). After doing this, the folder positions will revert to defaults but you can re-arrange them to your satisfaction. That re-arrangement should stick.

Thanks for the pointers, but:
(1) I've learned that any assumption that 10.7.x and earlier versions of OS X have completely similar behaviors is not a good position to take and certainly not to implement.
(2) At the best of times I'm wary about third-party applications which could do something nasty to my OS/computer and would need iron-clad guarantees that they wouldn't.
(3) I have extreme reluctance (due to my major insecurities derived from recent experience) to do anything with or to my machine that I don't understand (at least in broad strokes).

Re: Folder behavior
ryck #18698 10/25/11 10:05 AM
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Originally Posted By: ryck
You should consider shopping at Apple Canada on-line and buy refurbished. Aside from the fact that the items aren't technology from five minutes ago, they are close to buying new - including warranty - just a lot cheaper.
Further, the stuff just arrives at your door and is often free delivery.

I bought my iMac via the so-called Canadian Apple Store (located in Rancho Cordoba, CA).
I didn't notice any second-hand deals online. But I likely wouldn't go that route because I don't like buying second-hand anything, since whenever I have, it's wound up costing me more than new because of hidden defects and their ilk).
Since I don't know anything about external drives (as noted earlier) and until I do no purchase will happen.
And Apple's policy is that only purchases over $75 get free delivery.

Re: Folder behavior
grelber #18700 10/25/11 10:20 AM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
The Apple Time Machine external drive is $500 here.

That must be for the Time Capsule, which is overkill for an iMac. You don't need that. Any external drive will do. Firewire is better than USB, but USB will do. Get one with about twice the capacity as the data you expect to have on your drive. (If you've got a 1TB internal drive, with 200MB on it which might grow to 250MB, you should look for at least 500MB. By the time you outgrow that, 20TB drives will sell for pennies.)

Originally Posted By: grelber
I looked at the Time Machine application which came with my iMac and I understand absolutely nothing about it.

It's really easy. You plug in the drive, and TM will ask "Can I use it?" You click on "Yes", and you're using it.

Originally Posted By: grelber
My backups have been solely content-oriented, by which I mean I save my documents on a CD from time to time (but my Toast Titanium won't work here), so I imagine — if I can ever figure out how the CD/DVD burner on this machine works — that I might be able to use that.

Sounds good enough in theory, but believe me, in practice it's woefully inadequate. If you're doing it manually, you aren't backing up.

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