Why does Finder jump around (jump around)

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Level 1

15 points

Why does Finder jump around (jump around)

Can anyone help me better understand (and perhaps prevent) some of Finder's funkier behavior? I'm coming from the land of PC (thanks for the warm welcome) but find this jumping around really confusing and troublesome.

I'm on a 13" MBP and when I try and uncollapse a folder, I think I want finder to stay "focused" on the folder that I am uncollapsing. Right now it seems to (?) jump all the way down, or all the way up, to whatever folder happens to be /selected/. This means that I am /constantly/ scrolling through a list of 100's of files to get /back/ to the folder that I am interested in.

Finder should know this since it is the folder I just uncollapsed...

Since the "selected" folder is totally irrelevant to me it is a total PITA to constantly be running around like this.

Do I /really/ have to select the folder I am uncollapsing and /then/ uncollapse the folder in order to get finder to stay focused on the folder I am interested in and I am uncollapsing?

Thanks.

Mac OS X (10.6.3), Mac Pro, MacBook Pro

Posted on Sep 11, 2010 12:09 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 11, 2010 12:35 PM in response to Hotwheels22

I'm finding it rather difficult to follow exactly what you're doing. Your terminology is unfamiliar.

First, when you open Finder, what view do you have selected for the Finder window? Icon, list or column?

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Answer 2

Sep 11, 2010 12:51 PM in response to Hotwheels22

Right, I'm guessing you must be using list view (fairly logical for a Windows user I suppose).

However, just playing around in that view now, I can't replicate the behaviour you describe. One folder highlighted, expanding multiple other folders, the window stays where I scroll it whatever's selected elsewhere.

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,126 points

Sep 11, 2010 3:12 PM in response to Hotwheels22

I can't replicate it either, but I have seen other posts indicating funny behavior like that in list view.
If a restart (or Relaunch Finder in Force Quit) doesn't fix it, try deleting the com.apple.finder.plist file from your user/Library/Preferences folder.

It was quite a while ago I saw that post, so if you search, use advanced and select All for the scope.

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Answer 4

Hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 11, 2010 6:32 PM in response to KXsig

HiKX, All.

Thanks for the look.

This is not the issue that I have. This poster appears to see the selection in the Finder window to jump around basically at will.

My issue is the following:

If I open the Documents folder in list view in Finder
and then I scroll down to the last folder in the list in Documents folder (I have a lot of folders in Documents)
and then I select the last folder or item in the list
then I scroll all the way back up to the top of the Finder window.

If I uncollapse the first folder in the list view in Finder,
finder then jumps all the way down to show the last item in the list -
either the folder or item I selected at the beginning.

This means that I am now looking at the last item in Finder when I want to be looking at the contents in the first item - the folder that I uncollapsed.

ODDLY this does not happen the same way in reverse. If I select the first folder in the list, then scroll all the way down to the last Folder in the list and uncollapse that folder - finder will not scroll all the way to the top to show me the item that was selected.

Does this make sense?

If not is there software on the mac that will let me take a video of it and post it somewhere?

It's very annoying and I'd like to know if I can prevent it...

Thanks

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Answer 5

Hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 11, 2010 6:36 PM in response to noondaywitch

Hi Thanks again.

One item of clarification is that I am on a 13" MPB with a lot of documents and folders.

When I uncollapse a folder it means that the items in that folder often run off the screen so that I don't see the next folder in the finder window.

thanks again.

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Answer 6

Hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 11, 2010 6:37 PM in response to Hotwheels22

sorry. this was the OP I was referring to:

Am I the only one having this annoying behavior?

In list view, particularly when using sorting by date, if I scroll up it keeps going down to select a certain file (not always the same, as if it memorizes one in a given window), and keeps going there no matter what other file I select. Sometimes it waits a second or two before scrolling back, sometimes it does even while I am scrolling. It's driving me crazy! No update (I am in 10.6.4) ever changed this behavior which appeared with SL.

I have a video showing the behavior, you find it here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/porcelainsbysilvana/4934582361/

Where does it come from? How can I get rid of it? Thanks in advance for any help

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Answer 7

Hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 11, 2010 7:10 PM in response to KXsig

Hi. Thanks. Duh.

I went to Finder, Preferences to find the calculate sizes option you asked about.

I uncheck "Spring Loaded Folders and Windows" and it disappears....

God this was a frustrating issue...

Thanks to all for the assists!

Cheers.

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Answer 8

Hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 12, 2010 5:24 AM in response to Barney-15E

Hi Barney.

Thanks very much.

I seem to have this kind of funky behaviour in a number of OS issues and have been slowly trying to nail them down. I'm a new user so it is very hard for me to find the time to address them as I convert and try to keep working.

I /do/ have two "insecure startup items disabled" warnings that come up on startup. I have done a couple of archive installs due to trying to move items that were coming in from a pc (this was a nightmare because I was finding all my buried images from my pc folders on the mac and turns out finder was copying instead of moving these images because it thought they weren't on the hd apparently).

Anyway, it has definitely solved the issue which was mind-numbingly stupid behavior. I would have addressed it five months ago but a mac genius acted like it was normal behavior...

Anyway, do I drag and drop the finder plist at this point? Do you have any recommendations beyond this particular issue (which seems to have been solved in an odd way apparently).

Thanks.

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Answer 9

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,126 points

Sep 12, 2010 11:12 AM in response to Hotwheels22

Yes, you can just drag the plist to the trash.

Reinstalling the 10.6.4 combo update might fix the insecure startupItems thing.

It does sound like you have some messed up permissions on your home folder. However, I can't be sure unless we looked at them with some terminal commands. Or, you could just try resetting them.
[Here is an article on resetting them|http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329971-263.html] if you want to give it a go. Apple has a similar article, but I can never find theirs. While the article is for Leopard, it works the same with Snow Leopard, just use the Snow Leopard installer DVD.

Also, it is better to just copy and paste the commands. Most importantly, the ` is not an apostrophe and it is important to use the correct key. It is to the left of the 1 with the ~. So, copying works out better than trying to type.

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Answer 10

KXsig

Level 2

310 points

Sep 12, 2010 12:05 PM in response to Barney-15E

Hi B and H,

I agree with B, spring-loaded, as far as I understand the function, should not cause the scroll focus change as we are experiencing.

Instead of just turning it on or off, you could change the delay related set to one of the extreme points, slow or fast, and see if this brings some change. This way we could be sure about this being related or not related.

Good luck.

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Answer 11

KXsig

Level 2

310 points

Sep 12, 2010 12:14 PM in response to Hotwheels22

Hi H,

If you are considering a new install again - which is not necessary so far - you could have better results by making a good backup of your personal files and applications and perform a Zero Out Erase and install Snow Leopard after that, continuing with a step by step for each released update install.

Are you still with the 10.6.3 version?

Good luck.

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Answer 12

Hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 12, 2010 12:34 PM in response to KXsig

Hey K.

Thanks. I'm on 10.6.4.

Ideally I don't want to do a fresh install as I am converting over to mac "on the fly" and it is quite enough to try and get up and running while getting work done. It's actually a lot bigger task than I really anticipated.

That said, some of these really goofy things keep cropping up and I keep wondering. As an example I am not sure if the hd icons for my external hard drives, the hard drive icon for parallels virtual machine or the hd icon for my desktop - all return to the same place I had them on the desktop. The icon for my external hd in particular seems to get dropped onto a place a little above the trash icon on the right hand side when I consistently move it to below the Mac hd icon on the top right.

I'm also running Parallels 5 and the startup on this software is interminably slow. It is /really/ hard for me to imagine that this is the current state of affairs with Parallels in terms of startup.

I keep hanging in there and trying to knock these down when I get the time. Obviously the lack of definitive fix for this finder scroll issue causes me to wonder if this is a fact of mac life - things act idiosyncratically sometimes - or if there is something weird going on with my machine here and there.

Again a big thanks for the eyes and the listen.

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Answer 13

Hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 12, 2010 1:17 PM in response to Hotwheels22

ah shist.it's back.

is there a good way to do a mini movie on the mac and post it so you guys can see this?

I guess I'll drag the finder.plist to the trash and do a re-start in the meantime...

Thanks.

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Answer 14

KXsig

Level 2

310 points

Sep 12, 2010 2:05 PM in response to Hotwheels22

Hi H,

For the icons identifying problem you could change them. Open the desired icon image with Preview (any kind of image as GIF, JPG, ICN, TIFF or any other), choose Edit>Select All>Edit>Copy, after that select the item which icon you want to change and choose in the Finder menu File>Get Info, now at the Inspector Window that will open you select the top icon right below this window title bar and then choose Edit>Paste and the image you want will replace the item icon. This way you can identify items easily.

For Parallels I can not say a thing, I never used, is there an option to launch that manually or this can only be launched at startup time?

For you to record your screen you can use QuickTime Player, you can use the File>New Screen Recording option.

Good luck.

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Answer 15

KXsig

Level 2

310 points

Sep 17, 2010 4:44 PM in response to gerthdynn

Hi there,

I just had the opportunity to answer an Apple Support Survey and used this question, among others, as reference for a suggestion for a further deep information offering.

Hope in some time we can solve this or at least understand.

Regards, K.

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