Keeping windows in column view ugh?!????!?!?!?!?

ive written before on this. I click on a file it opens in icon or list view. i do not want my windows opening like that.
I have done everything i could. What must i do to keep the windows in column view?
please
Apple tell us!

Not to sound flippant, but don't close the windows! I've been using the same two Finder windows for 6 years now. If I want them out of the way, I hide them or minimise them to the Dock. To be honest, they're rarely in the way because I use Dragthing as an application switcher, so I just use Dragthing's app list to bring forward the app windows I want -- the Finder windows gradually sink to the back.
My Finder windows are always there, always handy, and always in column view.
HTH!

Similar Messages

Tiger refuses to open new windows in columns view ?!?

What might be the problem when the finder refuses to open new windows in column view?
What ever I do with preferences, new folders are always opening in icon view.
It is very frustrating when dragging files to the folder inside other folder, where in column view they should be in alphabetical order, and destination folder should be easily found, but in icon view, they are in what-so-ever order, and the changes of placing files accidently to the wrong folder is multiplied.
The workflow is always more or less disturbed with this, so that creativity is not the the adjective that is mentioned to describe the working with these machines.
Is there anything that could be done?
This same problem occurs similarily in both of my Macs G4 PowerBook and G4 MDD PowerMac.

Hello,
Trash the Finder preference file: com.apple.Finder.plist
/Users/YourName/Library/Preferences. Drag that file from the Preferences folder to the Trash, empty the Trash and reboot.
See if that helps...
If not, then perhaps it's a good time to check the boot disk for errors;
If not, shut down the Mac(s). Now, press the power button, hold down the C key, and insert the restore disk all at the same time. Keep holding down the C key until you see the Apple logo. An Installer window will open but DO NOT proceed with any installations, instead from the Menu Bar, select Utilities/Disk Utility. In the DU window, select MacintoshHD in the panel on the left, select the FirstAid tab and click: Verify If DU reports errors, click Repair. When it's finished, from the Menu Bar select Utilities/Startup Disk and select MacintoshHD 10.x.x and click Restart.
If you don't have your restore disk you could try booting in Safe Mode. Go here for instructions:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455 What is Safe Mode?
Carolyn

Opening windows in column view by default

Hello all,
I just got a new iMac 24” aluminum a few days ago and have set up all of my apps, defaults etc. I want my windows to always open in column view and have used View Options to set it that way. Each day when I start up though, the windows revert back to Icon View and I have to reset them again. On my old machine I had them opening in column view by default and they always did so. And I remember that there used to be a button at the bottom of the View Options window that, when clicked would keep whatever you set your options to as a default for all windows. That button no longer exists. Possibly somewhere in one of the updates along the way it’s been removed. Anyway, I want to set my windows to always open in column view by default and can find no way to do that anymore. Does anyone know how?
BTW, the new alu 24" is GREAT!!
Rick

Then there's something wrong with you OS installation. Not really sure if there's an easy fix other than an Archive and Install. But you can try a few things first.
1. Repair the hard drive and permissions:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Delete the /Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist file.
3. Create a new user account and log into that account. Does the problem cease?
4. Boot into safe mode. Does the problem go away?
5. Use a utility such as TinkerTool System and clean system and user caches.
If none of these have any effect then an Archive and Install may be necessary:
How to Perform an Archive and Install
An Archive and Install will NOT erase your hard drive, but you must have sufficient free space for a second OS X installation which could be from 3-9 GBs depending upon the version of OS X and selected installation options. The free space requirement is over and above normal free space requirements which should be at least 6-10 GBs. Read all the linked references carefully before proceeding.
1. Be sure to use Disk Utility first to repair the disk before performing the Archive and Install.
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger) and/or TechTool Pro (4.5.2 for Tiger) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Do not proceed with an Archive and Install if DU reports errors it cannot fix. In that case use Disk Warrior and/or TechTool Pro to repair the hard drive. If neither can repair the drive, then you will have to erase the drive and reinstall from scratch.
3. Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When you reach the screen to select a destination drive click once on the destination drive then click on the Option button. Select the Archive and Install option. You have an option to preserve users and network preferences. Only select this option if you are sure you have no corrupted files in your user accounts. Otherwise leave this option unchecked. Click on the OK button and continue with the OS X Installation.
4. Upon completion of the Archive and Install you will have a Previous System Folder in the root directory. You should retain the PSF until you are sure you do not need to manually transfer any items from the PSF to your newly installed system.
5. After moving any items you want to keep from the PSF you should delete it. You can back it up if you prefer, but you must delete it from the hard drive.
6. You can now download a Combo Updater directly from Apple's download site to update your new system to the desired version as well as install any security or other updates. You can also do this using Software Update.

Re: Finder windows in Column View

I can't seem to attach a file at Google Chrome, the Finder Window is too tall and unable to click 'Save', 'Cancel', etc. I had to pick a document/photo to exit the window.

pooba wrote:
Is anyone having this trouble too?
I noticed this delay when I first moved to Leopard. Side-by-side with a much slower machine running Tiger, the delay was extremely noticeable.
Now it is just as quick as Tiger. Sadly I don't know what has caused the delay to go away. FWIW, my initial Leopard instal was an Upgrade. I have since done an Erase & Instal: a bit drastic, and I'm not even sure this was the cause. I think the situation had improved before the 10.5.1 update.
The most plausible reason is that it occurred after the weekly maintenance script was first run on the new installation. You might like to try this, it can do no harm:
Open the Terminal (from /Applications/Utilities) and copy and paste the following into the Terminal window followed by a return:
sudo periodic weekly
Press return and you will be prompted for your password. This is not echoed for security reasons, so you won't see anything as you type: just type it and press return.
If you haven't used 'sudo' before, you will receive a little lecture before being prompted for the password. Read it and continue. It will take a couple of minutes to complete—you'll know it is finished when your shell prompt reappears.
I would be very interested to know if this helps, because, as I said, I suffered this slowness initially. It would be good to know what made it go away.

Column view and the Grabber bars

I can't seem to find out "why," but when I open windows in column view in Mountain Lion (and this happened in Lion too), "sometimes" the grabber bar at the bottom (used to size/widen a particular column) is there in all windows, and sometimes the column is just a line with no grabber bars.
When it is a line, I can still size the column by putting my mouse arrow on the line (and the widening arrows appear) and moving it left or right, but I prefer to have the grabber bars at the bottom.
I never know when it is going to change from one way to the other, or how long it will stay the way it is. Sometimes one of the two ways stays a week or two, or just a few days, then magically just changes up on me.
Anyone have any clue "why" this keeps changing back and fourth for me?
Thanks in advance
Lou

No idea why this setting would keep changing back and forth for you, but thought I'd chime in after my search to get those little grabber bars to show up at all.
If you haven't already, check the following:
Go to System Preferences, under Personal click the General icon/settings. Under Show scroll bars: choose the Always radio button setting.
My grabber bars had disappeared for reasons I can't explain. So far, after setting Show scroll bars to Always, they've stayed visible.
Until Apple enables a Finder window's ability to ALWAYS/AUTOMATICALLY/DEFAULT to auto-adjust it's column width to "Right Size" to the longest file name WHENEVER a new directory/window is opened or browsed this will be my preferred setting. Since you have to right-click, double click, option-click, again and again and again and again, I like the bigger target.
Good luck.

Always enable preview in column view?

Is there a way to always enable the preview of a file in column view? I keep having to hit the arrow to have it face downwards to see the preview of files whenever I am in Finder.

I miss the timeline scroller. I used to have multiple windows in column view open and be able to compare a specific frame of different movie comps quickly and easily in the Finder. While Quicklook is neat, it doesn't fill the void for this issue, and the lack of a volume controller as mentioned.

Can't get folders to stay in column view... pulling hair out!!!

It doesn't matter what finder view options I set, they work for 1 or 2 times opening a finder window in column view, then goes back to the icon view. I hate icon view!!! What is the ridiculous deal with this and how can something so chump-change, penny-ante as keeping a simple folder view preference be so ridiculous as to migrate from one version of OSX to the next!?!?? At least there was an app in 10.4 that was in Utilities that you could log in as root, reset the windows the way you wanted and then log back out. Ridiculous that you had to do that kludge, but it worked... but I can't find that application anymore in Leopard... arghhh! Wow, I feel a bit better to have vented Can anyone help me fix this so I can always have Column view as the default... and possible save my sanity in the process?

Does this KBase article still apply?
Mac OS X: How to Save a Finder View (Column, Icon, or List) for a Specific Folder or Disk
It appears the Finder only keeps the desired setting if set on a newly opened window. If the folder was navigated to within the window and the setting is changed, that setting is temporary. So you need to (temporarily) set the Finder to open folders in a new window (Finder Preferences) so any window you navigate to is a new window, a "starting point". Then you can actually save that folder's setting. Note you can leave the "Show View Options" window open as you change between windows and it relates to the active window. Once all your desired folders are set, you can uncheck to open folders in new windows.
I usually navigate in column view and of course clicking through folders in column view is not the same as opening a new window so I had to create aliases of some folders to test with but this worked for me.
(hmm, further testing, they seem to keep for me even when set by navigating to it within a window.... but this might be worth a try)
Ivan

In column view, the file item, ie .ai doenst preview?

The preview of items are no showing. So I have to open the file in order to see
what it is, which is very bad, b/c i work with a lot of illustrator files.

CocoaThumbX is a separate program that you will need to download. The developer's site is here:
http://www.stalkingwolf.net/software/cocothumbx/
When you run the program you can select a batch of files and drop them into the program and it will create thumbnails for many, perhaps even most of the ai files, but not all. I have not checked to find out why some of thumbnails are blank. Also, the thumbnails it creates appear to be only a tiny section of the original. There may be a better program for creating ai thumbs.
You can download the free QuickLook generator here:
http://hrmpf.com/wordpress/195/leopard-quick-look-for-illustrator-files
Download, unzip, and put the file here:
"/Library/QuickLook/illust.qlgenerator"
You'll need to restart or log out and back in. You will then be able to see a full thumbnail in the Finder in both the Preview column of a window in column view, and in Quicklook with any window view, just select the file and hit the Spacebar.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Making finder open in column view?

I really like the OS X Finder's "Column View". Unfortunately, Finder windows always seem to open in icon view, even though I've checked the "Open New Windows in Column View" option in Finder preferences. Any idea why this option might not be working (on a brand-new installation with the latest software update installed)?

Hi, Mike, this below is from the Helpviewer: Click screen bring up finder go to Help on Menu Bar , Helpviewer> Click Index "Mac Help Index" click 'f" all about Finder.
"To always use column view when you open a Finder window, choose Finder > Preferences and click General. Select "Open new windows in column view."
If you choose icon or list view, the Finder saves your view settings. The next time you open the window you will see the same view settings you chose previously.
You can also customize the items that appear in the toolbar of Finder windows, or you can change the overall look of windows."
Hope this helps.
~Eme

How to make column view default?

This has been bugging me for a long time, but it's such a little thing that I've never bothered to investigate before.
I am about to give my old G4 Powerbook to my father who is still using OS9, so the change to OSX will be quite an adjustment for him. He has always had trouble dealing with folders and the hierarchy so when I set the machine up for him, I want things to be as consistent as possible and I think that using column view in Finder windows will help him to see where exactly his documents are stored.
Here is where the problem lies. Whenever I create a new folder and open it's window, I am presented with icon view even though I have "Open new windows in column view" selected in my finder prefs.
How the heck do I get all windows to always open in column view?? This seems so basic I'm embarrassed to even be asking the question!
Thanks in advance
Marion

I tried the above, and it worked in Leopard but not in Tiger. In fact in Leopard it doesn't have to be the root HD - if you open any folder, set its view the way you want and then close it, that sets up a "global" view style. All subsequently opened folders will have that same global view unless you override it, which you can do for an individual folder by checking the "Always open in XXX view" box in the View Options for that particular folder.
I don't think there is a way to set up such a "global default" view directly in Tiger. I think that the general Finder preference for "Open new windows in column view" doesn't mean "all" windows - it means just the "new" window that is generated by command-N (or Finder>File menu>New Finder Window).
I found an interesting post that describes using Automator in Tiger to go through every existing folder in the home directory, setting each folder's window to column view - see:
*10.4- Change all Finder folders to identical views - Mac OS X Hints*
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050502101913508
I don't know how well this works or how long it takes.

Can't choose column view in finder window

My view options in the finder window doesn't have a active hyperlink for the column view. It shows icon, list, cover flow, but not column. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Post a screenshot. AFAIK, this is the only toolbar option:
27" i7 iMac (Mid 2011) refurb, OS X Yo (10.10.1), Mavs, ML & SL, G4 450 MP w/10.5 & 9.2.2

In the finder window, column view, I double click on icon, eg. a spread sheet, and document will not open since I updated to OSXv10.8.2. Help anyone?

In the finder window, column view, I double click on icon, eg. a spread sheet, and document will not open since I updated to OSXv10.8.2. Help anyone?

Hi Ron,
Highlight one in the Finder & do as Get Info on it, what does open With say to use?
What did you update 10.8.2 from exactly? 10.6.8 maybe?

Finder window sizing in column view.

Does anyone know if it is possible for the Finder to automatically expand the view to the longest file name in column view? It is very frustrating to have to drag the little lines on the lower right to the right to resize the window manually whenever I open a document folder. I hope I am not confusing anyone but it is hard for me to describe what I mean. Why do I have to manually resize it to the length of the longest file name every time?
Thanks.

I don't think the "Finder" can be configured to resize itself automatically whenever an item with a long name appears in a given window. However, double-clicking the "little lines" (the ones that look like "||" at the base of each column separator) will cause that column to self-adjust to display the longest name. Since a double-click requires less effort than a manual drag, hopefully that will save you a little bit of frustration.
If a generally wider column is preferred, try holding down the option-key while resizing the column - all columns should be resized simultaneously in that window, and the setting should be retained as the default width.

Is there a way to set the FOLDERS window in Adobe Bridge as a Column view?

I'm used to the way Finder display the folders on Mac(Column view). I would love, if its possible, to have the option to set the Folders window in Bridge to Column view:
Finder Column View:
Instead of Bridge List view:
Is there a way to set the FOLDERS window in Adobe Bridge as a Column view like in Mac OSX Finder?

Is there a way to set the FOLDERS window in Adobe Bridge as a Column view like in Mac OSX Finder?
No, but it is very nice idea, add it to the feature request page:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/

Items in Finder window will not show alphabetically while in columns view

I am running a Mac Pro Yosemite 10.10.1
a couple of weeks ago I had some kind of glitch since then it takes a long time to save items having a continuous spinning beach ball.
Also in the Finder window items will no longer listed alphabetically while in columns view they list fine in the other views.
Is there an easy way to fix or could I fix it by reinstalling the operating system?

Hi tundrabob,
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities. Based on what you stated, it sounds like Finder takes a while to save and you need to sort a window. I would recommend that you read these articles, they may be helpful in troubleshooting your issue.
This article may help the spinning beach ball.
Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck - Apple Support
OS X Yosemite: Ways to view items in Finder windows
Sort items: In any view, click the Item Arrangement button , then choose an option, such as Date Created or Size.
OS X Yosemite: Reinstall OS X
Cheers,
Mario

Keeping windows in column view ugh?!????!?!?!?!?

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