"Name" portion of my Finder windows too long

Having the same problem. Also occured in 10.8. Very frustrating as this happens to me several times a day on different Macs. This is a ridiculous bug and this shouldn't happen on a professional grade workstation/operating system.

I was having this same problem, but I think I've found a solution that works for me

I went full screen with Finder and then used ESC to go back to standard view of the Finder window

I then got up the show view options window with CMD+j (t's also on the view menu)

I then hit the "Use as Defaults" button at the bottom of this window and now Finder seems to keep the name column a reasonable width every time I open Finder

hold the option key while draging the window smaller at the bottom right of the window. Not the side of the window, but the bottom right corner of the window. This will resize the whole thing and move the left and right side simultaniously. This worked for me. I think I set the column width first, but can't remember. Haven't had to do it again since.

Spoke to level 2 support at Apple about this one, they were very honest that it's a bug and that there is nothing we can do until the engineers feel like it's important enough to address. They told me I could find some temp solutions around the web, and I have. Have a short cut now that resets window so it's all readable without too many steps. This is the second most annoying thing wrong with Mavs, first being slow and sometimes not working network performance using SMB.

If you are constantly having to organize loads of files, you might want to try Path Finder as a Finder replacement for now. I was using it a lot before 10.9, but tabs in Finder made Finder that much more useful. But now, Finder has become all this extra work every time it decides to rearrange the name column. Good Luck with this one guys...

Michael-

Mavericks introduced several bugs into the Finder. One of them is that in List View, the Finder frequently loses track of the column widths, and makes the Name column so wide that the other columns aren't visible unless one scrolls the window horizontally.

The following Applescript resets the column widths to something sensible. It uses a couple kludges to work around some *other* Finder bugs that Mavericks introduced.

-- Reset the width of the Finder's Name column to something sensible.

tell application "Finder"

set thisFolder to target of front Finder window

set the current view of front Finder window to list view

-- In previous versions of OS X, the next line would tell the Finder to set the width -- to exactly 300. In Mavericks, the Finder uses it as a *minimum* width.

set width of column id name column of list view options of Finder window 1 to 300 --

The following kludge is necessary to get the changes to "take". I got it from -- Dr. Drang at www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/10/quick-switch-to-big-finder-icons

close front Finder window open thisFolder

end tell

I have tried every single proposed solution listed in this thread to solve the enigmatic "extremely long name column" bug in Mavericks and none of them have worked for me...

Tried re-installing Mavericks
Upgraded to 10.9.4

Tried the AppleScripts w/ BetterTouchTool
Tried the Option key with finder columns

Setting defaults, adding columns, etc
...and everything else listed all the way back to the start of this thread. The only thing that sort of worked was filling the windows with all the columns I don't want to see in order to force everything left, but this really clutters up my screen with data I don't want to see.

None of it works. Sure, some things may work for some people but I just, once again, started with a fresh new Mavericks 10.9.4 and tried all these things all over again and, nope, nothing. I can have a Finder window open, change the column size to something close to the actual file names (what a concept), set defaults, revert to defaults, all combinations... then close the window or tab, re-open it, and it's all back to ridiculously long name column sizes, over and over.

Is it really that hard to fix? I'm surprised the employees at Apple haven't become more frustrated with this. As a consumer who uses Mavericks 40-80 hours a week easy, I would love to see the following options:

1. AUTO-FIT COLUMNS in Finder (it's so basic)

2. TAG DOTS in their own column (not integrated in the far right of the name column!)

I would think those two things would really help with the overly long name columns, as well as make the name and tag columns more useful. Wish I was a programmer because I would love to fix this issue and share the solution with all others who are frustrated. OS-X is amazing, we just want it to get more amazing.

I finally broke down and wiped out both my MacBook Air and iMac, manually restoring data, and installing apps fresh. The re-install was straight to 10.9.4 and did not require any updates except the recent iTunes update. Fresh install and Finder columns are acting normally again, auto adjusting the columns to the total size of the window and opening up being able to view all the columns. BUT, I see that I still need to adjust the columns in folders from external drives and shares that were last viewed with the previous installation. Once I adjust, the adjustment is sticking and the columns work normally. Before I jump to too many conclusions, I'm going to spend the week and see if my frustration levels go back down to normal Mac levels from the current Windows levels. =) will report back. If it's a good week, you guys might want to consider doing a fresh install. In my case, I had gone from 10.7 to 10.8 and then to 10.9 on both machines. In the past, that would never had been an issue and maybe it won't be in the future but i would say the most issues occurred from 10.8 to 10.9. So while 10.9 might be wonderful on it's own, the upgrade process was not kind to me and I have not enjoyed using it with my laundry list of issues. With this experience in mind, I won't be rushing into 10.10 and when I do, I will be doing a fresh install and manually move my data, just like a windows upgrade. Doing that once a year is not so exciting.

I wound up doing a fresh install of all my Macs, manually restoring data and avoiding any restores. Finder name columns in list view is behaving a lot better now, but finding little bombs here and there as I got to places locally and on the network that were last accessed by my old installs.

Actually, I'm finding the OS a lot better after doing a fresh install. Hope that the upgrade to Yosemite isn't such a disaster like upgrading from .8 to .9.

I do remember bragging to my windows friends how Mac updates were flawless. Down to the last webpage I was on.

Give the fresh install a try or wait for .10. I'm even using Mail.app again, albeit minus any gmail accounts.

I actually just recently got a new MBP, and got the chance to try new OSX install twice (the first SDD broke with 2 weeks of usage).

Both installs had the same finder tab problem. Also the same issue is on the iMac I have. And on all colleagues' Macs as well.

Doesn't really encourage me to try a reinstall. So I guess I'll just wait for Yosemite and hope for the best.

Also now that MS lays off people, maybe Apple can catch someone who knows a thing or two about adjusting columns' widths 😉

LOL.. there are certainly some features from Windows File Explorer that I would love to see in Finder. Most notably it's networking features. Very strong network mapping features. Ability to backup favorites or store in the network. Speed... Windows File Explorer is super quick.

Sorry to hear about the issues you are having, hopefully some of the guys who post often in here don't see your post, they will be quick to say it's all your fault because in their studios, all their macs are perfect, with zero issues and all of us with this issue are having personal problems.

Hope Yosemite resolves this... it's a big worry of mine that it will start to happen again on my macs after I did a lot of work to resolve this.

My beef with this issue is that I am always sorting my Finder views by Date Modified. However, the Date Modified column is ALWAYS outside the Finder window, be it a standard Finder window, an Open or Save/Save As... dialog. I always have to manually resize everything to access the Data Modified (or any other) column, other than the Name column, which is always too long.

No matter what I do in View Options or press the Use As Defaults setting button, nothing seems to stick.

OS X 10.9.4

I experienced the problem today and decided to fix it. Found the blog and did not see a straight forward solution so accept the apology if this was somewhere in the long thread already.

In FINDER set the columns and tabs exactly like you want them in list view.

Use Option to Drag the column width.

My font size is 16 but this is just a preference.

Use SHOW VIEW OPTIONS and even add some column headings you rarely will use.

Now REARRANGE the columns so they are even in the order you need. (name cannot move)

* also under all my files area NAME is not a heading so this one window may result differently.

Once completed DO NOT shut the finder window. Open ACTIVITY MONITOR from utilities

Quit Finder ... not force quit

From Dock click Finder to bring its respawn to front.

Verify the changes took place.

If not repeat above (in case another finder task was running on the first try.)

If YES then toggle FULL SCREEN then try a couple sizes to verify the change fully took.

If any of the sizes don't show the change, option fix it like before, click set as default, activity monitor stop it again.

This has worked for me using MAVERICKS 10.9.4 to resize the column widths in Finder

-Paul v

an avid mac user

Due to my schedule constraints this is the first time I had sufficient time to root this out. Sorry for the delay.

This seems to work fine especially taking the advice to perform the action again if it fails first time.

2nd time it worked a treat.

However going to full screen sees the name column widen once again. Upon reducing from full screen the folder resizes nicely.

Even Option dragging and doing the finder quit and relaunch (in activity monitor) several times makes no difference to the full screen look.

I'm happy with this anyway. Now that we have struggled and cursed with this bug for ages now, no doubt an Apple fix will probably be minutes away.

Sometimes I reckon their techs need to head out into the burbs and deal with real life set ups. Not those that populate their pristine labs.

(PS - the finder situation suits me for now - I am yet to to test it from a reboot)

gfingersc

Be very very careful with the bug word... big brother is watching and reading!

Things have been much better since my re-install. I still run into areas of my file system that have long columns in list view that run off the screen, it's much less common now, still don't know the cause. In my 14 years on the mac, have never seen anything like this odd behavior.

Wish I had one of those picture perfect labs or studios where there is never a single issue and or person 😉

Yeah the full screen does not take the change. Glad I rarely need that view. This Mac has been rebooted several times since that change and it has remained fixed. Hope your troubles are far and your wildest dreams come true.