Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion Edition

Moving and Copying Icons

In Mac OS X, there are two ways to move or copy icons from one place to another: by dragging them or by using the Copy and Paste commands.

Copying by Dragging

You can drag icons from one folder to another, from one drive to another, from a drive to a folder on another drive, and so on. (When you’ve selected several icons, drag any one of them; the others tag along.) While the Mac is copying, you can tell that the process is still under way even if the progress bar is hidden behind a window, because the icon of the copied material shows up dimmed in its new home, darkening only when the copying process is over. You can cancel the process by pressing either -period or the Esc key.

Understanding when the Mac copies a dragged icon and when it moves it bewilders many a beginner. However, the scheme is fairly simple when you consider the following:

• Dragging from one folder to another on the same disk moves the icon.

• Dragging from one disk (or disk partition) to another copies the folder or file. (You can drag icons either into an open window or directly onto a disk or folder icon.)

• If you press the Option key as you release an icon you’ve dragged, you copy the icon instead of moving it. Doing so within a single folder produces a duplicate of the file called “[Whatever its name was] copy.”

• If you press the key as you release an icon you’ve dragged from one disk to another, ...