And, as you have noticed, you can’t select more than one item at a time. Sorry I don’t have a better answer, but I was unable to figure a simple way to move those items in batch.

If you have an old backup of your Safari Bookmarks file, you could restore that, or there is a chance you could open FireFox, as it to import your Safari bookmarks, do some management of those bookmarks in FireFox, and then import them back into Safari.

Dave

The only way I would feel safe that TidyUp found a duplicate file would be if it used a checksum of the file to compare. If those were duplicate, then I could feel safe to delete one of them.

At any rate, for me, the cases of duplicates would be rare. Though I do have perhaps 10’s of thousands of files called index.php or index.html. Unless it uses checksums on those, I would want to preserve those duplicates. And even then, the chances I have identical index.html or index.php files that are identical, yet part of a project and need to be there, are high.

Projects in general are an area where duplicate are part of the nature of working on a computer. You may have Client XYZ and be working on mockup A, mockup B, and mockup C, all of which have Client_XYZ_logo.gif in triplicate for each mockup. I like to keep projects as self contained entities, so if I pack one up, it has all the parts related to it. Removing two of those duplicate locos would indeed get rid of two redundant files. In this case, I believe the redundancy aids in organization though, and does not in fact stifle it.

I am a bit curious how you end up with so many duplicate files that you need a tool to manage them, what is it that you do as your career/work that gets you in this position?

The AppleScript should not be too hard, as long as your needs are simple, and you very well may be able to hump your way along in Automator to make it all work. Depending on how complicated you want this to be, is going to depend on how complex the AppleScript or Automator action becomes.

If we kept it to say, a folder of .webloc files, all of which you wanted to open one, bookmark that location, then move that one file elsewhere, then repeat the process, that should not be too hard.

This script does 100% of what you want it to do except the bookmark aspect:
http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?pid=100479

If you look at that, and look at the section where it says:
print document 1 without print dialog

Delete that line, and insert in applescript that will make a bookmark. If you want to cheat and just get it done with, use AppleScript to mimic pressing the keys on your keyboard, which would be something like this:

tell application “Safari”
key code xxx — Command D
key code 36 — Return
end tell
end tell

Save the file as an application, and drop your .webloc files on it, one at a time, it will open them, wait for each to load, press command-D and save the bookmark to the last bookmark location you set, and move on to the next.

I like the idea of an AppleScript solution, but I haven’t used AppleScript. (The last programming I did was with HyperCard, back in the ’80’s!) In its defense, TidyUp is GREAT for removing duplicate image files, even if the names are different, as well as finding certain types of files (by size, type, etc.) with more than one search term to narrow the search. This time was a slip-up. However, I appreciate the suggestions on renaming files. I’ll see if my backup is workable, too.

Dave

It seems to be your computer was disorganized in your opinion, so you wanted to solve that. I am afraid to say, there is no easy way to do so, and any application that reports that it will is reporting falsely. Certainly, these applications can help, but you need to know and understand your computer, how it works, etc, in such a way, it nearly makes the need for the application moot. If you know that much about your computer already, you probably are not in this untidy condition to begin with.

One of these days I will write an article on cache files. In general, cache files are good, you want them, then speed things up. It is far faster for an application to locate data out of an optimized cache file, than to fetch that data randomly from disc or the network. Deleting cache files is something that can help if you are experiencing problems, but should not be part of regular maintenance, it is counterproductive. They were designed for a reason, to circumvent that is generally not a good idea. ( I am being largely simplistic in that explanation, so I hope the more advanced users here do not take me too literally )

I think you have a few options. One is to restore your bookmarks from an older backup,which you mention you have. Quit Safari and look in /Users/YourUsername/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist. That one file stores all of your bookmarks. Just locate that file on your backup prior to your use of Tidy Up, replace the file you currently have, after making a backup of that file of course, and you should be right where you left off.

Second option, would be AppleScript. You will take all of the bookmarks that are of an ill named format, open them all at once. This will take some time, and slow your machine down to a crawl. Once they are all open, you would run an applescript that bookmarks all open windows. I would get on any of the AppleScript forums and explain your problems, someone can help you craft a script that will solve your problem. It should not be too much, and only take a 15 or 20 line applescript.

You probably could avoid opening all the bookmarks, and just tell AppleScript to look at a folder, open one item, bookmark it, delete the file, and move on to the next. http://macscripter.net/ is a good resource for AppleScript.

Thanks for your response. I used a program called Tidy Up to locate duplicate files and other files that I knew I wanted to trash. Then I decided to locate and toss cache files. In the process, I noticed LOTS of files that had the kind “Web internet location”; these are what I assumed were bookmarks. (I’ve uploaded a sample snapshot at ( http://imgur.com/8bXTE.png ) There were many duplicates, since I had backed up my computer several times to a huge remote drive, and I decided to clear out a lot of space at once. However, I overdid it, and tossed them all. They did wind up in the trash; they did show up there. I retrieved a bunch of them, but now they’re all in one folder. The problem, as I mentioned, is that some have names like s9378j3897r9nchjf974966e7jdgk07538h; when they are opened with Safari, they show their true identities, but doing that one by one would take years! Anyway, I hope that’s a bit clearer. Any suggestions would be welcome!

Dave

In Safari, when you delete a bookmark, it is gone, there is really no way to recover from that bookmark deletion. Yet you state that you were able to retrieve them from the trash.

I tried a few different ways, and I can not get a bookmark to go into my trash. I can drag a bookmark from Safari’s bookmarks menu, into the OS X trash can, the bookmark will be deleted, but nothing shows up in the trash can.

Perhaps you can take some screenshots of your scenario so I can see what it is you are referring to? http://imgur.com/ is a good place to upload images to for showing to others.

If you could also explain in as much detail as possible how you got to where you are, I think we can figure this out.

Do you have backups? Perhaps we can just restore your bookmarks file back to a state when it was more manageable for you?

Dave

Maybe you can explain in as much detail as possible, what it is that you are trying to do. I find there is almost always a solution.

I am working on getting forums installed. There do not seem to be any Mac forums of what I would call “high quality”; I want to solve that. Forums all have too many categories, you immediately hit a wall of “where in the heck to I even ask my question”. God forbid, you break the rules of the forum.

I can install any of the free and open forums, which are nice, but also means I am forever updating them to make sure they are secure, and all my users data is safe. Or, I can look to a paid forum system, where security and updates are still a problem, but less so. Until I find the funds to secure a copy of the forum software I need, comments here will have to suffice.

OS X Help essentially covers the hosting fees, which is nice, but at 4 to 7 hours per post… from research, typing, proofing, screenshots, meta and description tags, possible video editing etc, we are not getting rich Forums are high on our list, they will happen, and open us to have more time to let the community help the users, while I can concentrate on the actual site contents.

I try to email a reply to everyone to let them know there is an answer waiting for them. So if you do not mind, try this:

1. What is your specific problem?
2. What have you tried to solve it?
3. Why is this a problem?
4. Are you sure you are not simply misunderstanding a core fundamental of how the application works, and in
5. reality there is no problem?
6. What is the behavior you see now?
7. What is the expected behavior from your point of view?

The more data you can give us, the better we can come to an answer, the less back and forth clutter in the comments, and the faster we can come to a solution to your issue. Assuming there is a solution.

I do hope we can help you get where you want to be. please let us know what you think about the above six issues, and feel free to add more if you see it suitable.

If you want the history of pages to stop, go to Safari Preferences and set history removal to one day.

Be careful what you delete, if you want to maintain some bookmarks, but not others.

Thanks!

Grab those, and slide that split window up, all the way to the top. You should be able to get it to go away entirely, aside from the search box, which still is handy to have.

You can take a look at a screenshot I made that shows how to restore your bookmarks to a list from the new split screen mode.

I personally do not spend a lot of time in bookmarks, so I rarely have needs for this. As long as a bookmark is made, and I can remember a few bits of it, I just hit command-L and start typing, Safari usually will be able to figure out the url I need pretty quickly.

Also, my “never looked at again” folder is called “temp,” unfortunately.

For deeply nested folders, you can control-click on the bookmark in your found set, and select “show in collection”, which should take you to an expanded list of where that bookmark lives.

If you are adding a bookmark, and want to be able to stick it into a sub folder somewhere, I usually press command-D to add the bookmark, click on the menu list, and just start typing the name of the subfolder. OS X will generally take me right to from the list.

Depending on how you have your tabbing preferences set in the System Preferences, you may actually be able to tab to the list of bookmarks, instead of manually selecting the list with your mouse.

I do try to limit myself to just one subfolder. Anything more than that, and I find I am being to granular in my thinking, and will spend more time on bookmark organization, than on just stuffing it into a single folder, and leaving it there, to never book looked at again anyway