Show Directories in Column View
Show Directories in Column View
Mac Tip #340, 28 May 2008
The strength of Column View is to show you a file or folder in its place amongst all your files and folders. Column View is mainly about relationships: this folder contains these folders which in turn contain these files.
My screenshot shows a Finder window with one file selected on the right, and all the files and folders around and ‘above’ it. It very clearly shows the hierarchy for a selected file.
To view columns go to the View menu in Finder and choose ‘as Columns’ or press Command 3. If you display the Toolbar on Finder windows, you can of course switch views with the Views buttons.
At the bottom of each column divider is a small ‘11′ — a pair of parallel vertical lines. Use these to resize the columns.
Drag or Option Drag
Drag the ‘11′ to right or left to make a single column wider or narrower. Hold down the Option key to affect all columns in the same way while you drag. In my screenshot I’ve made the leftmost column extremely wide.
Double click or Option Double click
Double click the ‘11′ to make the column an appropriate width for its contents. It may make it wider or narrower, depending on whether it was too narrow or too wide to begin with. Hold down the Option key while double clicking to set all columns to the same width at the same time. My screenshot shows the effect.
View Options
Columns are sorted by Name in alphabetical order, but call up the View Options window to change that. My screenshot shows the possibilities for sorting.
At the top of the View Options window is the name of the folder you have currently selected. In my screenshot you can see that in fact I have a file selected so the View Options window shows the name of the folder that contains the selected file.
Choose whether or not to always open that particular folder in Column View, and what size the text should be.
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Then come 3 checkboxes that interact to affect what you see. In the first of 3 screenshots I’ve selected to not show any icons at all. The name of each file or folder has no icon to the left of it.
In the second screenshot of the series I have elected to show the icons but not the icon preview. The icons to the left of each name are generic. I have also chosen to show the Preview column. In the column to the right of the selection is a preview of the selected item, together with detailed information about the file.
The final screenshot shows the icon previews: the icon to the left of each filename is representative of the contents or nature of the file or folder.
List view and Icon view, as explained in previous Tips, both show you all the files contained in a single folder. Column View reveals the relationships between files.
In the next Tip we explore Cover Flow View.
Column View the movie
I’m still experimenting with making movies and would love to get your feedback.
View the larger Column View Tips movie - large (23 Mb, .mov file) or the smaller Column View Tips movie - small (12 Mb, .mov file). Note: give it time to load — it will play eventually.
Alternatively, download the Column View Tips Movie (zipped, 20 Mb). After it’s downloaded to your machine, double click it to expand the zipped file and then double click the movie to play it.
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is jointly authored by Miraz Jordan and Maria Langer.
Discussion
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
For those who, like me, are users rather than experts, I recommend reading the tip then watching the video. That way I get two runs at the information and the video reinforces the text. Going directly to the video is fine if I readily understand the content (but how do I know that if I haven’t read the text!) As usual with the tips I found out a couple of extra things that I didn’t know. Good on you for adding the videos, Miraz, it’s another dimension to an already excellent resource.
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