Finder Selections
Mac Tip#59/12-June-2002

If you want to open a folder or a file or send it to the Trash you must select it first by clicking once on its icon. That’s easy.

Now, what say you want to work with more than one item. Well, you can click on the first item and then hold down the shift key while you click on further items. A second click removes it from the selection.

If you have a lot of items though, this can be tedious.

If you want all the items you can select one and then choose Select All from the Edit menu.

There is another way though, if all the items you want are grouped together.

Click near but not on the first item then drag across the other items. You’ll see a selection rectangle which will highlight the items it encloses.

You can combine this with shift clicking too. If you want all items in a group except one or two then use the selection rectangle method to get them all and then hold down Shift while you click on items you don’t want. Or, select one group of items then hold down shift while you use the selection rectangle method to select another group.