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I’m just beginning to wade through David Pogue’s book, but I remember reading somewhere in there specifically that there was a setting you had to set to "Global" . I’ll post again when I find it again.
I find the Date Modified column quite useful: You can click on the top of any column in List View and the Finder will then list by Name, Date or Size etc.
Clicking the clear lozenge at the RHS top corner of the window opens the Toolbar and you can add the View icons to it if they are not there already — or you can just Cmd 1, 2, or 3 to get the View that you want.
It’s not the date Modified column that bothers me, it’s Relative Dates. Like Today, Yesterday, etc., instead of the actual date.
I know I can easily change these things but I don’t want to have to do it over and over for each time I look at a window. They claim they can be set to stick, but they can’t.
When you say the settings don’t stick, do you mean between successive openings of the folder, or between successive log ins? Have you checked your disk recently? It would be helpful if you were to post the exact steps you took that causes the window settings to be forgotten, otherwise we’re just guessing.
Each volume on your desktop remembers its own settings, and so does your Home folder when you open it by clicking on the Finder icon with no other Finder windows open. Each icon overrides the global settings. You need to set each of those "primary" icons to "All windows" AND change them to list view. Then close the windows WITHOUT opening a child folder. The next time you open the primary icons you should see your preferred view.
No, it works on my computer without restarting anything or logging out. You can have many windows open at once but the View options palette shows the information for the frontmost window only. In this special case, any changes you make to the "All windows" settings will not affect the other windows, even if they are set to "All windows": you have to change them too.
There seems to be some confusion about what the View Options palette does. It does not change the type of view of any window, even the frontmost window. To change from Icon to List or Column view, you must use the tool bar buttons or the View menu. The View Options palette will then be repopulated according to the new view mode. Each folder remembers which of the three modes it is in, and whether the mode-specific settings are local to that folder only ("This window only") or part of the global set ("All windows").
When you change an option in the View Options palette, you are simply changing the settings for the current window. If the current window is set to "All windows" then all other folders which are also set to "All windows" will also be updated, but only for the same view mode.
If folder A is in Icon view, and set to "All windows", and folder B is in List view, and set to "All windows", then changing an option (e.g. arrange by date created) for folder A will not be immediately visible in folder B. You have to change folder B to Icon view. Similarly, a change to folder B (e.g. don’t use relative dates) will not be visible in folder A until you change folder A to List view.
Okay. It seems kind of overly complicated but I think I can deal with that. I just wish I could set it in one place as a default and have it apply to all windows, except if I want to change one temporarily for any reason. As it is now I never know what view will pop up when I open a window, whether it’s one that was open before or not.
This is not on a network volume, though I can understand why server windows might be set to other than what I want (they should follow my local rules though, ideally, when I am viewing them on my machine).
I’ll just keep slogging along and hope it becomes clear sooner or later. But I swear, I never ever ever have Relative Dates chosen and I kill it whenever I see it, but it keeps coming up.
Setting it to always open in Column View in Finder Prefs seems to be working. I can then switch to List if I want and I don’t have to ever see Icon View. And this seems ot have mysteriously gotten rid of Relative Dates as well (fingers crossed).
But what Apple should do is have all the choices of view in that same dialog so you could set a default view of your choosing, globally and forget it. Then you could switch on a window-by-window basis if you want but any new window would always be in your default view. Ideally you could also choose to have a window go back to the default if you close and reopen, or not. It would only make sense.
So far I like OS X but there seems to be some sloppiness and things still not quite thought out.
I never got it to stick either but a simple workaround is to build a new folder {I keep it tucked in a corner of my desktop} set all the variables I want and drag acopy into the appropriate directory as often as I need one. Of course this only works for new folders but it keeps them starting consistantly.
Since CMD-n in OSX opens a new window instead of creating a new folder like Pre-X systems, this is no more effort than using the File or finder menus.
Column view has its uses but I don’t care for it. Icon view is useless if you have lots of files in a directory.
1° place it on your desktop where it suit you, 2° resize it to your liking, 3° view it as list, 4° then closing it without doing anything else. It will stick to theses criteria.
I have to tell you that window views are so easy to set and keep in Windows
It doesn’t always work though, does it? Sort a window, say by name. Drag in some other files. Where do they end up? Not in the right order unless you are very lucky. You have to manually update the view. Ugh.
The manual update can cause confusion in another way. Say you have a folder open, and you save a document to the same folder. Where is the file? For a moment you wonder whether you saved the file or not, then you remember to update the view manually. Ugh.
Always at the bottom of the list (in XP anyway). If you hit F5 it refreshes and they’re in the right order. Not a big deal if you know the behaviour.
But I’m not really comparing the two, just pointing out that if you set your folder views a certain way in Windows then every folder will have that view always, if that’s what you want. And that’s what I want. Simple. Should be that way on Mac too.
Just wondering if you ever sorted out this Finder issue?
Well I found a solution that may work for you. This is what I did to fix the problem on my machine.
1. Set up all your finder/windows settings & preferences the way you want. (NB. I didn’t set up View Options for the windows when in Icon View as I wasn’t planning on using it)
2. You need to create/login as a root user. This will give you all powerful master administrator control over your Mac (cool eh?). Now you need to set up all of your finder/window settings and preferences just the way you want ’em to look/function.
Now log out as the root admin and back in to yourself. Restart. Celebrate!!
Here’s a reference link to creating a root user account. Hope it helps – Chip.
Here’s a tip from the August 2004 issue of MacAddict magazine [edited for brevity]:
My Finder Settings Won’t Stick
PROBLEM: Column view reverts to icon view after restarting.
SOLUTION: This happens when the settings file for a given folder or drive is damaged. Settings are stored in .DS_Store files, which reside in nearly every folder on your Mac (ones you have opened in the finder). The best way to reset the .DS_Store file on the root of your Mac’s boot drive is to delete it and let the Finder create a new one for you. To do this, open the Terminal, type rm /.DS_Store, and press Return.
Use the same command but add a path name to reset the other folders or drives –you can reset your Documents folder, for example, by typing rm username/Documents/.DS_Store. From there, reopen those folder or drives and set them to display however you want.
I’ll check all of this out. But I have to emphasize that this is not working on all the machines here, not just mine.
Another thing I would like to set permanently is Find. I don’t need to see Parent in the Search Results, and I certainly don’t need it to be the leftmost heading. What I want to see most of all is Size. I can set this for each session but it won’t stick.
Regardless of the ultimate fix (if I can fix it) it seems absolutely idiotic to me that there isn’t a control panel type thing that lets you set these things permanently. And the clown who thought up Relative Dates should be shot.
Perhaps "the clown who thought up Relative Dates" knows that there are people who don’t know today’s date but, hopefully, have noticed that it IS today?
They gave me Administrator Privileges for the day. Seems to have fixed the folder view problems, but I still can’t seem to "fix" the Find thing the way I want it. Maybe it can’t be done?
You could slide the "parent" column to its most narrow; and click on the header name "Size" to arrange in order of size; but it doesn’t seem that you can change the order of the columns.
