Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition, The

Selecting Individual Files

Before you can move or copy files, you have to know how to select them. Selecting one file is easy—as long as it’s not in the Dock or a window Toolbar, click once on it. (If you click once on an icon in the Dock or Toolbar, it opens that item instead of selecting it.)

Type the first letter

To select any single file, even if you can’t see it in the window, type the first letter of the name of the file and it will be instantly selected. If there are several files with the same first letter, quickly type the first two or three letters. This technique makes it a lot easier to find your folder named “Waldo” in an alphabetized list, for instance, or a file that starts with “Z,” or any icon in a crowded folder.

Arrow keys ...