Special Edition Using® Mac® OS X v10.2

Navigating Finder Windows

Mac OS X includes several features that enable you to navigate Finder windows. There are two basic navigation tasks you do: moving around inside windows (to select items for example) or changing the contents of windows in order to view other folders and directories.

Using the Keyboard to Select Items in a Finder Window

Although you can use the mouse to point to and click items to select them (or double-click to open them), it can be faster to move to items and select them using the keyboard. There are two basic ways to navigate inside a window using the keyboard.

You can type an item's name to move to and select it. The OS matches item names as you type, so most of the time you don't need to type the item's whole name ...