'dead' alias in finder

Hi,
I installed GnuPG the other day, and have yet to work out how to manipulate keys etc. That's another matter. However, in Finder, there is an alias for GnuPG keys, and when I click on it, nothing happens.
No big deal, I'd like to delete the alias, but it refuses to leave.
Any ideas ?
D.C.

Oh bummer, bummer, bummer .. I'm dumb!!
I didn't mean 'Finder', but 'System Preferences'.
The icon is at the bottom of the System Preferences (or on an English-language version of Tiger it might be 'Settings'). When I click, it tells me that it can't find the settings.
D.C.

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I recently discovered that some of the WMV files that used to be on my machine, are still found by FINDER. These are dead alias files that I can't seem to actually remove.
Any suggestions on really good cleaning utilities that go system wide?
Thanks.

Hi Aaron, I can recommend some system utilities, you can try Cocktail or OnyX.
But could you be more specific about your issue? These are alias files which should delete easily.
Is the issue just that spotlight still lists them or they are actually are on your hard drive? Can see you see them in Finder or are they invisible? If they are invisible, you can use either Cocktail or Onyx to "show invisibles" in Finder and delete them. If it is only an issue with Spotlight then you may want to re-index.
Let us know.
-mj
[email protected]

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Adding folder alias to finder Sidebar in Lion with AppleScript

I am creating 2 AppleScripts to automate mounting Windows shared drives on Lion Macbook Airs. The first creates an alias on the user's desktop to the user's shared drive. This is functional and doing what I want it to do.
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Picture alias in finder broken

Sorry for the bad subject title, and english i suppose.
In Finder you have on the left side a menu with shortcuts.
One of them is the Picture alias, if you drop a jpg on this, you can see a green PLUS button, and the folder pictures wil open.
If i do this once, it is oke, but when i go back to, for example documents, and want's to do the same trick, i get a error message says, that the pad cannot be found.
So i have to delete the alias, en place a new one.
The same will happen, i can use it once, en the second time the link is broken.
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Log back into your normal user account:
Here's the whole litany for thoroughly checking your home folder.
1. Navigate to ~(YourHome/Library/Fonts - drag this folder to the desktop.
• Restart and test your applications.
• If they work start adding the fonts back few at a time.
( Likely suspects are Times RO & Helvetica Fractions, also if you do not use Classic you can trash the classic fonts.)
2. Check Preferences Thoroughly;
• Navigate to ~(YourHome/Library/Preferences drag this folder to the desktop.
• Restart and test your applications.
• If this works, save the old preferences folder somewhere else or on disk, name it "old prefs" .
** Note: A very important file is the "com.apple.Mail.plist" preference file located in the Preferences folder which contains all email account settings and general mail preferences (hold this one and replace if your problem is not with Mail).
You'll have to go through some of your System Preferences and apps to set the preferences back to how you like them. (Or if you have the time and inclination, "cherry pick" through until you find the problem one or two.)
3. Check Permissions Inside Home Folder
• Navigate to YourHome/Library.
• Get Info (Command - i) on folders for apps you are having problems with.
• Open the "Ownership & permissions" disclosure triangle.
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• Click on "apply to all"
• If this is correct, open the "Applications Support" folder and do the same procedure (Command+I) for the folders with the names of the applications you are having trouble with.
Note:
The reason to check this is because repairing permissions with Disk Utility doesn't touch permissions inside your home folder.
4. Navigate to YourHome/Library/Caches and drag this folder to the trash, then log out and back or restart. There is no need to replace this folder.
-mj
[email protected]

Removing alias from finder window?

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Both of you.....Thank you thank you a thousand times, thank you! couldn't get rid of this and one other folder for the life of me!

Cannot remove a broken sidebar network folder alias in Finder window

Mac OS 10.6.7 -- WinXP Home
I have a created netowork folder alias in the sidebar of my Finder window that points to a shared folder on an officemate's PC (WinXP Home). This folder has been deleted on the officemate's computer. Now, in my Finder window, I cannot click on the alias. Clicking on the broken network sidebar folder aliases or dragging them off of the side bar (they used to vanish in a puff of smoke but now they don't) does nothing.
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Click the arrow next to CustomListItems and you'll see a list of entries marked "Item" with a numeric suffix.
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If it's the right one, click again on the Item header (i.e. "Item [x]") and hit delete.
Quit Property List Editor and Save changes.
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Alias on Finder Window STUCK

You know when you open a Finder window? Up near the back button an alias for a .dv file appeared today. I'm not sure how I got it there, but there it is.
How do I remove it?

Files with .dv extensions are Digital Video so I would assume that it is from a digital video camera. If you double click on it what happens?
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Message was edited by: 2point5

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I just loaded a time machine back-up onto a new lion lap, one of my created folders however is stuck in the sidebar..can't click it..move it..open it..nothing..it's just a dead duplicate. Any ideas on how to remove this? Thanks!

Oh bummer, bummer, bummer .. I'm dumb!!
I didn't mean 'Finder', but 'System Preferences'.
The icon is at the bottom of the System Preferences (or on an English-language version of Tiger it might be 'Settings'). When I click, it tells me that it can't find the settings.
D.C.

How do I remove a broken alias in my Finder Sidebar without Apple Developer Tools loaded?

OS 10.7.5
I have a broken/dead alias in my Finder Sidebar. It will not activate when the cursor is on it therefore I can't move or remove it from the Finder Sidebar. I found a previous solution that requires loading the Apple Developer Tools in order to acces and edit the list of alias. Is there any other method that can be used to remove a broken/dead alias available?
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I have an alias in my ~/Movies folder that is linked to a folder on my external hard drive. The problem is that sometimes when I follow the alias the Finder quickly crashes and then relaunches. After it has done that it works fine when I try again. I have even tried deleting the alias and creating a symbolic link in zsh but that just gives the same problem.
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How to stop Finder from opening new windows to view contents of folders.

I have 2 folders on my desktop, called "Home" and "Work." Both are aliases to files stored in user/documents on my HD. Both contain many folders within folders within folders and, ultimately, documents. When I double click on the "Home" desktop alias, a finder window opens showing contents. When I click on any folder within that window, it does what I want it to...switches to the contents of that folder (within same window, without opening a new one.) This works for everything in that folder.
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I don't know if this is the problem, but for windows in "Icon" or "List" view that are set so that the "Toolbar" is not showing, a folder opened within that window will tend to open a new window. This is just a difference in behaviour between the two modes. To show / hide the toolbar, try clicking the elongated button in the upper right corner, in the "titlebar" of the window, or choose "Show Toolbar" / "Hide Toolbar" from the "View" menu.
Additionally, a workaround might be to switch to "Column" view ("View" > "as Columns" ⌘3), since opening a folder within a window in "Column" view does not appear to spawn a new window, even with the "Toolbar" hidden. Another option might be to hold down the "option" key while opening the folder - this causes the previous window to close as the new window is opened.

When I drag ANY JPEG into a new folder of ANY kind, I get an alias, not an original. And, when I drag aliases onto a blank disk to burn it, I get burned aliases, NO originals. That's what I'm asking. How do you drag a JPEG and NOT get an alias?

When I drag ANY JPEG into a new folder of ANY kind, I get an alias, not an original. And, when I drag aliases onto a blank disk to burn it, I get burned aliases, NO originals. That's what I'm asking. How do you drag a JPEG and NOT get an alias?

Finder Help describes how to move, copy etc.
As well, Apple - Support - Discussions - Moving or Copying Files and ...

[SOLVED] Trying to make command into bash alias

Here is a command I would like to make into an easy to use bash alias:
#Copy results of a find to somewhere
find -iname "*something*" -exec cp '{}' /path/to/copy/results/to \;
I realize there are usually several ways to do something in the shell, so if a better way of course I'm all for any tips but if I wanted to make this an alias so that I just had to do:
alias pattern pathtocopyto
How would I? I have tried:
alias findcp="find -iname "$1" -exec cp '{}' $2/ \;"
But this does not work, says it cannot find the search term when I ran it in a test dir full of properly named files and dirs.
TIA for any help
Last edited by colbert (2008-12-17 23:19:09)

Hmm, I tried that Procyon, I could see the HD light on the case go solid so it was running the find but it did not work. I have a file called "layla.mp3" and a dir called "test" in the current dir, ran it like this:
findcp layla test
Gave no result and test was still empty Thanks for the help guys hopefully can get this to go..

Any way to reduce alias sizes?

I noticed that the file size for my aliases were 1MB+ which is ridiculous. It is apparently a custom icon issue. So okay I've figured out that much. What I can't find is a way to fix it. Are there any tricks anyone knows for shrinking them?

Troy Pickett wrote:
Are there any tricks anyone knows for shrinking them?
Yes. Down to 6 KB in Mountain Lion.
The "bad" news: it's a multi-step process, and it requires at least one shareware (i.e. non-free) application to handle one part of the process.
The good news: it's possible to automate a major part of the shrinking down to a single Finder keyboard shortcut, plus one click on a button, plus a warning confirmation. (The latter part could be probably automated even more by using an AppleScript and a terminal command while also bypassing the "shareware software step", but I didn't look into it yet.)
In general, the following post sums up the issue quite well for an overview, although it doesn't really offer a workable solution: https://discussions.apple.com/message/6443819#6443819
The solution until Leopard (OS X 10.5) used to be a simple but effective Contextual Menu Item plugin:
http://www.splook.com/Software/Shrink_Alias.html
Snow Leopard and later dropped the support for Context Menu plugins in favor of Services, so the plugin won't work out of the box anymore.
Additionally, I think since Snow Leopard (or was it in Leopard already?), apart from including the icon in the resource fork, an Alias now also includes the same icon in the data fork, effectively doubling its size. Sigh.
And the Shrink Alias plugin wasn't ever updated to handle the data fork anyway.
But there's a workaround to make Shrink Alias – and other old Contextual Menu Items – run nonetheless.
Open your ~/Library folder. It's invisible by default, but you'll get there from the Finder "Go" menu while holding the Option key.
In your Library folder create a folder named "Contextual Menu Items".
Place the ShrinkAlias.plugin in there.
Download and install the free Shortcuts application from Abracode: http://free.abracode.com/cmworkshop/shortcuts.html
There's actually two of them in the download and you may want to install both. For running Shrink Alias you need Shortcuts32.
Read the Shortcuts instructions on their webpage carefully.
(I have also noticed that you may need to add background apps ShortcutObserver and ShortcutObserver32 to your Login Items manually since the corresponding Setup command doesn't stick sometimes.)
In the Shortcut32 "Menu" tab you should assign a global shortcut to actually invoke the context menu in Finder.
When you select an Alias in Finder and press your shortcut from step 6, you should now see a contextual menu with the Shrink Alias menu item. Selecting it will already reduce the Alias size by one half, by removing the icon data from the resource fork.
But there's still the data fork…
You need an application which can edit file forks.
I know of two shareware options:
• Path Finder – an extremely powerful file browser, many people are actually using it as a full Finder replacement.
• File Utility from Limit Point Software – a relatively easy to use "one trick pony".
Both apps support the OS X Services.
• You can either use Path Finder's "Show Info" global service to open its File Info window, where you need to activate the Attributes: Dates/Forks section and delete the Data Fork.
• Or you can use File Utility's Delete Data Fork service to invoke the app's interface for the selected item. (Note that you may want to disable all its other "Delete XY" services from the System Preferences in order to prevent file damage.)
Further automation is possible by assigning Services keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences, and by using a macro utility like Keyboard Maestro. As mentioned at the beginning, it should be even possible to automate everything using Applescript and Terminal commands and compile it e.g. as Service plugin using the OS X Automator. But that requires further investigation.

'dead' alias in finder

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