Finder crashes when moving files from search (High Sierra)

Question

Finder crashes when moving files from search (High Sierra)

I moved to High Sierra last week, since then I've had some issues with Finder. The most recent one is that when I attempt to move a group of files from a search to a folder that already contains some of those files, Finder hangs. I can reproduce this every time.

Here's an example: if I have a folder called 'bob's files' and all the documents are called 'bob[n]' (so bob100, bob 102 etc.). I do a search in Finder for 'bob' and realize that there's some files that aren't in the directory. I select all the 'bob' files and attempt to move them to the 'bob's files' folder. Whenever I do this, Finder hangs. If I go through every single file and manually deselect all the ones that are already in the folder (which is super tedious) I can move the files as expected.

Can anyone provide any suggestions on how this can be fixed?

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012)

Posted on Dec 17, 2017 5:42 AM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

141,060 points

Dec 17, 2017 1:00 PM in response to Musicnotnoise

I do a search in Finder for 'bob' and realize that there's some files that aren't in the directory.

Where are they, prior to moving them to that directory?

If I go through every single file and manually deselect all the ones that are already in the folder

I don't quite understand why that's necessary. Can you explain the need to delete files already in the folder? For example, if you attempt to move a file into a folder containing an identically named file, a dialog should appear asking what you want Finder to do with the duplicates.

Not that it matters though. The Finder should never hang. You may have encountered the bug described in this Discussion: Spinning beach ball when moving files and folders within their parent folder. If you can duplicate it as well then it's not something any of us can fix. I already told Apple about it.

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Answer 2

Dec 18, 2017 5:41 AM in response to John Galt

Where are they, prior to moving them to that directory?

In another directory

I don't quite understand why that's necessary. Can you explain the need to delete files already in the folder? For example, if you attempt to move a file into a folder containing an identically named file, a dialog should appear asking what you want Finder to do with the duplicates.

I'm not deleting any files, just moving them. Also it's not that there is a file with the same name, it's the same exact file. So perhaps I didn't explain it well enough.

Here's another example. If I search for 'Bob' in pictures, I'll get both of the following as results. If I select both files and try to move them into the 'Bob' directory, Finder hangs. Manually deselecting the first image (which is the image that's already in the destination directory) is fine if there are 2 results, but where there are 100+ it's incredibly time consuming.

/Pictures/Bob/Bob1.png

/Pictures/Bob2.png

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Answer 3

John Galt

Level 10

141,060 points

Dec 18, 2017 6:24 AM in response to Musicnotnoise

You explained it well. It's a bug. All you can do is to wait for Apple to fix it.

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