Virtual merged folders

hi there.
i want to make a virtual folder which displays the merged contents of multiple folders. i'm finding it harder than i thought and i'd be grateful for a solution if anyone has one.
i have one large folder on an 800gig partition where my media files go and it's pretty much full, so it's time to start saving my stuff to a new location on another drive. the way i'd like to handle this is just to drop in a new 1TB drive and have the big folder appear as having 1800gigs.
i don't want to do a concatenated RAID, i'm perfectly happy with the files being on separate drives, i just want the contents appearing to me, the user, as being in one place
this would be super simple if spotlight would just let me specify the search locations; i could tell it to 'select all' from folder X and folder Y and save it as a folder. iTunes does this really easily as well.
the closest i got with spotlight was searching "this mac" for folders containing a string common to both folder names and type='folder'. in the finder this would just show the two folders but in path finder i was able to expand the folders. that's almost what i want except i don't want the files from each respective folder to be segregated, i want them all mixed in together; i don't care and don't want to know which of the two folders actually contains this or that file.
does it make sense what i'm trying to do? anyone have an idea how i can do it?
thanks

Francine Schwieder wrote:
You can edit a Saved Search to have it work on two seperate locations--I have one that searches my home folder and a folder on my data drive. However, it is a pain to set it up, as you must open the Saved Search as file and then edit a couple of entries and resave it.
good point, I think I saw your posts about doing it but I forgot about this.
You might find one of the third party search programs will do what you want. NotLight can be told to search in a number of places, but you can sort the results only by name, location or size, not by date. Also its "save" function seems to not actually work (it saves its searches as an .xml file, and doesn't reopen them with a double click). Also, it was written for Tiger, not Leopard, and has not been updated. HoudahSpot may work better (I haven't used it) but it costs 25 bucks.
It MIGHT be possible to write an AppleScript that runs Find on folder A, then on folder B, and outputs a combination result, afraid I'm not enough of a scripter to know. You could try asking in the Applescript forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=724
If it can be done some one there would know.
Nothing you can do with plain apple script will be very useful. It has a very limited ability in terms of displaying things. the right solution would be for apple to bring back this function to GUI searches. since it's still possible to achieve by editing the saved search file this should not be that complicated.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Similar Messages

  • Merging folders and files in the Mountain Lion

    After updated from Lion to Mountain Lion I can`t to merge folders using the key option/alt. I lost many important files doing this process. What the best solution to resolve this problem? I`m tired to find a solution for do it.

    I was seaching the Java website for JME technical articles and found a great article !!
    http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/mobility/apis/articles/fileconnection/index.html

  • Merge Folders in ms/%default directory

    I found these Part.xxxxxxx.merge folders in my datastore drive and they are using up about 40gb of space. I'm wondering what these are for and how/if I can clean them up.
    Vincent Sprague

    Hi Vincent,
    It seems the folder is not created by Exchange Server. Consequently, I’d recommend you verify whether the folder can be modified in the first place.
    We can try rename the folder and see if the Exchange environment is affected.
    Regards,
    Rebecca
    We
    are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
    interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
    Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

  • Merge folders in Mavericks.

    How do I merge folders in Mavericks? I have multiple folders and wish to merge all at once. Each folder has multiple subdirectories as well.

    Hi Vincent,
    It seems the folder is not created by Exchange Server. Consequently, I’d recommend you verify whether the folder can be modified in the first place.
    We can try rename the folder and see if the Exchange environment is affected.
    Regards,
    Rebecca
    We
    are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
    interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
    Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

  • How to merge folders?

    I create two folders with the same name. How do I merge them?

    You cant' merge folders by dragging one folder onto another. Open one of the folders and drag the icons from one folder to the other folder by tapping and holding down on the icons until they wiggle, then you can move them.
    If the iPad named a second folder with the same name as the first folder (which the iPad is apt to do on it's own) rename one of the folders. Open the folder, tap and hold down on an icon until they wiggle, the folder name will appear in a white horizontal bar, tap the bar, the keyboard will pop up and you can rename the folder.

  • Windows Explorer copy wrongly offers to merge folders

    When copying a folder tree to an empty(!) location using Windows Explorer it often complains about folders already existing in the target location and offers a merge.
    This is reproducible on all my machines:
    Using Windows Explorer
    select c:\windows
    copy to an empty directory
    Windows shows a dialog "Confirm Folder Replace", offering to merge Windows folder with different create date
    I posted about this problem a long time ago, but did not get an explanation.
    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/f44f2402-809f-4a53-a009-df58463a0cac/#49661e88-1eed-43a0-9e74-dedcb07bfc0f

    We have just experienced a similar problem for the first time and think we can at least partially explain it.  We are copying the "My Pictures" folder from our c: drive to an external disc drive, where we then rename it with the date appended. 
    But when we tried to copy it again a month later, we got the erroneous merge dialog box, just like everyone else.  We tried renaming the old folder (with the date appended) to something completely different, but it didn't make any difference -- we
    still got the merge message that said our two different folders had the same name.   Huh?!
    We think the problem is related to this:  we saw in one of our Windows 7 books that "My Documents" is just a localized "display" name for the ACTUAL file system name
    for that directory, which is just "Documents".  (The connection is made through some hidden Desktop.ini file that points to a system file named Shell32.dll ... don't go there!)
    Anyway, this is a "feature" allows us to DISPLAY the name of the "Documents" folder as anything we want, in any language we want, without actually changing the name of the "Documents"
    directory in the file system itself.  You can verify this by bringing up an old "DOS" command prompt window and using the DIR command to view the actual directory names in your user profile:  the actual file system directory name is still "Documents",
    no matter what you (or Microsoft) has renamed it to be displayed as (in our case, "My Documents").
    To our sorrow, we discovered that this property is "inherited" when we copied the "My Documents" to an external drive for backup and then renamed it with a date suffix, ie, "My Documents 2011-03-05".  As it
    turns out, we were only renaming the folder
    display name.  If we again use a command prompt to look at the directory structure on the
    external drive, the actual file system directory name on the backup drive is still "Documents" (!!!!!).
    Now, when you try to do a copy/paste of one of these folders, Windows 7 appears to be slightly schizo.  We think it looks at the
    actual file system directory names when doing the paste, so (in our case) it sees a sub-directory already named "Documents" in the target folder and decides it's time to put up the folder merger
    dialog. 
    But when it generates the (erroneous) folder merger dialog window, is uses the local display names for those two folders (which are different).  So you end up with a ridiculous looking message
    which, in effect, says "Your target already has a folder named "ABC" so do you want me to merge folder "DEF" into it?"  But at the file system level, it thinks you're trying to copy a directory named "Documents" into a parent folder that already
    has a sub-directory with that same name.
    We can even "catch" Windows 7 erroneously using the actual file system directory name if we click-hold-drag (in order to move) our renamed "My Documents 2011-03-05" folder from one folder to another folder on the external drive. 
    The move operation works fine, BUT after the move, the name of the "My Documents 2011-03-05" folder has been altered to display as, you guessed it, simply "Documents". 
    Yikes!!! Since when does a simple click-hold-drag to move a folder also RENAME that folder?
    So far, we've only caught this happening on directories/folder-names that ship with the OS itself, such as "Documents"/"My Documents", "Pictures"/"My Pictures", etc.  It did
    not happen with a "Windows Live Mail" directory that we are also periodically copying to our external drive, presumably because Windows Live Mail 2011 was installed separately from the OS.
    Well, we don't think we can fight this bug, so we're switching to a new strategy for our backups.  We now create a new folder on the external drive with the backup date in it, ie "2011-03-05" and then copy the "My Documents",
    "My Pictures" , etc. etc. folders to that new "dated" backup folder.  This avoids duplicate subdirectory names going into the same folder, and lets the OS call the copied folder name a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g it wants to!  Plus
    we don't have to append the date to the copied backup folder names any more.  As an added bonus, when we see that the "2011-03-05" backup folder is so old that we don't need to keep it anymore, we can just delete that folder and all of its subfolders
    and files, and that backup is history.   

  • Merging folders in Mac OS X: A solution...

    This is not a question, but a solution I discovered.
    For unknown reasons, Apple has never adopted one of the basic features in Windows; to allow two folders to merge without deleting any content. Mac geeks may use the terminal, but if you're not a savvy, you're bound to move each file/folder in the content manually. Or use some fishy free app that might or might not work.
    The solution lies in FTP.
    1. Get a FTP program. Filezilla is free. I use Transmit.
    2. Open system preferences, click "Sharing", tic "File sharing" and with that highlighted, click the "Options" button, tic box "Share files and folders with FTP", save and close.
    3. Test to make sure it works: create two new folders on your desktop, name them e.g. "1" and "2" or whatever. Put 2-3 files in folder "1".
    4. Open your FTP client, enter "localhost" as the FTP address and your username/password and you're in. Navigate to your desktop and in to folder "2".
    5. Drag (or upload) folder "1" from the desktop in to folder "2" via the FTP client. Make sure it got there with the files inside.
    6. Now, delete all but one of the files in folder "1" at the desktop. Repeat the upload via the FTP client in to folder "2".
    7. On the desktop, open folder "1" inside folder "2" and check that no files have been deleted. You should have the same number of files as you had from the start, despite uploading a folder with less.
    Hope this works for you.....

    If you uncheck it, than your computer will be visible to anyone, but they will not be able to see the files. There is no option to make your computer "invisible" to anyone on a network.
    The people who see your computer in Finder will just see the Shared Folder, but they will not be able to access it.
    ~Christoph

  • Merging Folders and Sub Folders.

    this might be a stupid question.
    let me just say i like backing up my music in folders on a drive that are more easily accessed than on time machine.  and for many years ive had all my music backed up on 2 different backup drives. ive always just picked out everything that was new within the sub folders and moved them over.
    is there a way to automatically merge all folders, subfolders, and files without re-copying everything??
    for example. let me set this up. i have one folder on the Root drive Called "Music" the directory goes "Music/Artist/Album/Songs" etc.
    if i want to copy all the new music without copying every single artist and album again by hitting replace, i have to go in and manually select new albums from existing artist folders and drop them in.
    if that doesnt make sense... lets say i have an artist already in my library and i add a new album. it shows up in my itunes artist folder in another folder. but if i go into finder and select all artists and drag them into the backup disk "music" folder and it says.. "this folder already exitsts" Skip, Replace, Stop. or whatever. if i hit skip it will completly skip the new albums from existing artist folders and only add new artists from the "Music" Folder.
    if there a way i can make it Merge and add every folder and file from new albums instead of skipping over them???

    The only stupid question is one that you don't ask (my favourite saying from when I was an instructor)
    Think of what you are trying to do more as adding to or removing from or changing a group of source files and folders and you want that structure "mirrored" to another drive. The rsync command is ideal for this; it compares the source and destination structures and makes the destination match the source by adding items to the destination if they aren't there, removing items from the destination if they are no longer on the source destination. In doing the comparison, it builds a list of what needs changing, so that only those things get copied, not everything.
    it will work most conveniently for you if you make it copy your iTunes media folder, because then you only need to add your new album (for example) into iTunes and then use rsync twice, once for each backup drive. As an iTunes media folder is usually organised how you describe (artist/album/song), so you don't need to maintain your own separate structure, you'll simply have two extra copies of your iTunes media folder, one on each backup drive... Sound like what you want?
    The downside to rsync for beginners is it's usage from the Terminal; it can be daunting, and for those new to the command line, the help can be cryptic sometimes. It's past midnight here and I need to crash, so if you want I can help you with it in 12 hours or so, just reply to let me know. In the meantime, if you want to use rsync, open Terminal (Applications > Utilities) and type man rsync. You can read up on it a bit; don't worry if you don't understand a lot of it at the moment, the purpose is to understand better the command we will be putting together when you finally see it. When reading man pages, hit F to go forward a page, B to go back and Q to quit.

  • Content sort on merged folders

    Hello experts,
    in the content administration I have defined three roles with following structure
    RoleA
    Reports - folder entry point
    -Projects - folder
    --ReportA1
    --ReportA2
    RoleB
    Reports - folder entry point
    -Projects - folder
    --ReportB1
    --ReportB2
    --ReportB3
    The folders "Report" and "Projects" in both the roles are identified with same Merge ID. Subsequetly when a user has both the roles assigned he or she sees following structure:
    Reports
    --Projects
    --ReportA1
    --ReportA2
    --ReportB1
    --ReportB2
    --ReportB3
    so far so good. Now I want to reorder the reports in the Projets folder following way:
    Reports
    --Projects
    --ReportB1
    --ReportB2
    --ReportB3
    --ReportA1
    --ReportA2
    I tried to change the attribute "Sort Order" on individual reports or on the folders (Reports, Projects) in both the roles but without any effect on the display order.
    Can someone help?
    Regards
    Jiri

    Hi Jiri,
    Change the merge priority so that Role B becomes the dominant role.
    Refer
    http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/53/89503ede925441e10000000a114084/content.htm
    Thanks
    Prashant

  • How can I merge folders on OS X 10.9.4?

    Hi; I'm trying to copy folders from my Macbook Air's hard drive to my Google Drive app. The folders are newer versions of what's on Google Drive - ie it contains much the same stuff but some extra files and maybe some updated files.
    However, the only options it gives me when copying are "Replace," "Don't Replace" or "Stop" (and from what I can tell, those latter two do exactly the same thing - or should I say, don't do the same thing... I mean they both just cancel the copy).
    I was sure there used to be an option "Merge" which skips anything identical and replaces only new or edited files. This is the exact thing I want to do! But is that option gone? Or is there a way I can get it back? (I can't find any way to bring it back in the system preferences).
    I could just hit "Replace" (and I will in the meantime), but there are two problems with that: 1) that will get annoying when files and folders are large; 2) more pressingly, that will muck up the sharing permissions. There's a particular sub-folder that I currently have shared on Google Drive with specific people, and I don't want to override that folder with one that's identical in everything except the all-important sharing settings.
    Many thanks!

    I doubt the "merge" option will appear when you try to copy to a Google drive. It will only appear when you copy a folder from one drive to the same location as a duplicate folder on another volume, if at all. But that may not apply when you copy to a network volume.

  • Sort priority of merged folders and worksets

    Hi Forum!
    I have a challenge, which I hope some of you can contribute to solving:
    I'm trying to merge several roles, which have different structures, but I can't get the sorting to work. Here goes :
    Structure of my different roles:
    1 : Role -> Folder -> iView
    2 : Role -> Folder -> Workset -> ....
    I've setup merge ID's on the folders, so they merge fine into one top-level navigation item - no problem here.
    But my problem is to control 2nd. level navigation. I can't set any navigational priorities on the iView directly attached to the folder, which leaves me without any possibility to control the sort-sequence on 2nd level. I already tried to insert a folder or workset in between the folder and iView level, but this also results in an additional navigation layer, which I don't want.
    Any ideas, on how to solve this ?
    Rgds.
    Claus Gosmer

    Hi Claus,
    the property you are looking for is called "Sort Priority" (or Sortierpriorität in German).
    This property is available for iViews, pages, worksets and folders. SAP Help link
    If none of the objects has a sort priority or all objects have the same priority the content is displayed in the order of appearance in the role. If some have a sort priority and some not the ones with prio are displayed first in the order of ther prio and then the rest...
    Should work that way!
    Hth,
    Michael

  • Merging folders, most recent dated files

    Does anyone know how I can merge two folders with mostly the same file names so that the most recent ones are collected into another folder...and if there are any other files not duplicated, they are added also?
    I looked at FileMerge but there seems to be users saying it is unreliable. Any shareware or other applications would be appreciated.
    I do not use terminal.
    Thanks.

    appwoz wrote:
    Does anyone know how I can merge two folders with mostly the same file names so that the most recent ones are collected into another folder...and if there are any other files not duplicated, they are added also?
    You might consider Chronosync (which I haven't used):
    http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_overview.html

  • Migration Thunderbird (PC) to Mac Mail (OS X) : merged folders

    Hi there,
    I'm trying to migrate my emails from Thunderbird (PC) to Mac Mail. I have multiple accounts in Thunderbird in separate forlders.
    I copied the thunderbird profile folder from my old PC  and imported the emails to Mac Mail, unfortunately the different folders and email adresses have merged. How can I import my emails with the same organisation?
    Thanx

    Apple support.
    Transfer downloaded email from a non-Mac computer

  • Merge Folders - what am I missing?

    OK, so I'm new to Mac OS and to the forum, but I have read Apple's instructions, I have read through the multiple threads in the Support forum and I have even watched someone else demonstrating this functionality on Youtube... but I can't make it happen???!!!!
    All I want to do is take some folders and files from my external HDD in a folder called "Old" and put them into a similarly named "Old" folder on my MacBook to empty the HDD.
    A lot of the files on both these locations are the same as they both originated from my old pc a couple of months back before it was stolen. Since then both version have additions, modifications and sub-folders.
    In Windows I would have used cut and paste and merged the files and subfolders.
    In Mac I understand I can do this by holding the alt key... but it doesn't seem to work?
    Do I need to do something else first or do I need to approach it differently?

    Try to Merge from the same drive (Not from an external drive to internal, make it from the internal to internal or external to external)... this way it would work.
    I am a core Windows user (actually I work with that) and I bought the MAC to learn and to see what is good or not. I like Final Cut and I had good results with lightroom, together with some good software. The bad part is to migrate large amounts of data or to work with files, it is a pain! In Windows you delete a file and the next item is selected so you can check it, in Mac you got no selection and you need to start all over again...

  • Merge folders and sub folders

    Let's say I've got two folders, each with the same name but on different drives, each with multiple subfolders containing multiple files.  And many of the subfolders have the same name and contain many of the same files. 
    If I try to merge them by dragging one folder from drive A to the drive B there's a pop-up saying "The location to which you're restoring [folder name] already contains an item with the same name.  Do you want to replace it with the one you're restoring?" and given options to Keep Original, Keep Both, or Replace.
    Keep Original does nothing, Keep Both renames the folder on drive B and moves the folder from drive A over, Replace blows away the folder on drive B and moves the folder from drive A over.
    Is there a way to actually merge them, keeping the unique files and renaming the collisions?

    There isn't a way to do what you want in Finder.
    I would suggest either learning to use rsync or use a folder syncing program such as Sync Two Folders. There are also several in the App Store. Search for sync folders in the Store.
    I don't know if any will specifically Merge the two folders, but I assume they will.
    Here are some other tutorials: http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201102/merging_directories_folders_on_mac_ os_x/
    http://the.taoofmac.com/space/HOWTO/Merge%20Folders

Maybe you are looking for

  • Purchase Requsition is not closing automatically During ME59 PO creation

    Hi, We are using PO creation through ME59, In ME59 we have set the indicator 1 Set reqs. to "closed" In PR we have 1 qty and in PO was created for 1 qty. But the PR was not closed. When we check the F1 help for the filed it say it will work with resp

  • Help in Multilingual Implementation

    Hi, We are trying to create a multilingual application using Java and Oracle. In the browser, my charset encoding is UTF8, then my database charset is defined as WE8ISO8859P1. If i try to send a data (latvian language) and save it in the database, th

  • How to have a week start on monday on the IPhone ???

    I jus want to know how can I make my week start on monay not on sunday. On ICal the week start on monday. Thanks in advance

  • Macbook Pro (2012) won't wake up from sleep mode

    Hi, When I purchased the Macbook it came with Mountain Lion. It worked fine. Then I updated to Maverick and lots of problems happened. The most annoying one is the wake up thing. I was glad to update to Yosemite thinking that it would resolve my prob

  • Final Cut Pro X (10.1.4) refuses to quit

    It does everything properly while I'm working with it but then refuses to fully quit and I can't reopen it or shut down or sleep the computer.  I end up having to manually shut down and restart each time.  I'm running Yosemite on a quad core xeon Mac