There is often the need to select multiple items. Whether you are in the Finder within a window and you’d like to select multiple files or you are in iTunes or iPhoto and would like to select multiple songs or photos, the procedure is the same. Apple tries very hard to keep consistency a priority throughout the system so quite often, what works in one program will also work in another program.
Let’s assume that you are in the Finder and have a window open. There are a group of files that you want to move to another folder. You can open the two folders so that each is viewable and then select one file at a time and drag it to the desired window. You’ll realize that this is a very repetitive task and therefore there should be a better way to do this. There is.
If the files you want to move are are listed sequentially in the window, that is, they are one after another with no skips, you can select the first file by clicking it once. Then, go to the last file that you want to move and “Shift-click”. That is, hold the “shift key” down and then click on the last file. You will notice that all files between the first and last file are now selected. You can then continue your task and click once on any of the selected files and drag them to the other folder.
There are times, however, that you may want to move a group of files that are not consecutively listed. In that case, click on the first file and then “command-click” on all of the other files that you want to move and you’ll notice that each file you click on after that will become selected. This allows you to select a group of files that are not listed consecutively within the window. This can save you a lot of time.
SHIFT-CLICK:
OPTION - CLICK:
