( I believe this is a bug, or at least intended behavior on Apple’s part that the don’t care enough about at this time to resolve. )

Yes, this is an issue I run into all the time when I want to look at a folder of pics. If I set it to icon view with large icons, there is a good chance that an entire row, more more, will be off the screen. I can make the Finder window as large as possible, yet there will always be a row or more that I have to scroll left and right in order to see.

As you have found, it is rather random as to what determines how many will be chopped off and under what conditions.

I usually will just select all the items, press the spacebar, and use QuickLook to take a peek at my images. It has some advantages in that you can view them as a slideshow. The one disadvantage is that you can’t easily go from looking at one file to opening it right away. However, I rarely need to do this as I am in a mental mode in which I just wish to view files.

I know of no way to solve this, aside form perhaps an update to Lion 10.7, though I can’t personally confirm that will fix it either, as I have not had a need to test it out yet and this computer is not running Lion.

Hope that helps.

When I’m in column mode and want to look at my pictures in icon mode, I switch over and sometimes, I’d get very small icons, 8 to a row, say.

So I enlarge them until they’re big enough to see and only 4 fit to my screen. The remaining 4 is off-screen so I need to scroll both vertically and horizontally.

Maybe this is the way it is but, I’ve had situations where, if I change the size at the right time, I only get 4 icons across and it’s perfect.

Now – here’s the weird part – if I make them smaller again, the number of items in each row increases so a row fills the entire width of the screen (with 8 icons, say) but, if I make them larger once again, the number of items in each row does not decrease and I have to scroll horizontally again.

Is there a way to have the number of items in icon mode both decrease (with larger icons) as well as increase (with smaller icons) so that each row has just enough icons to fill the width of the screen and no more (so I would’ve have to scroll horizontally)?

Thanks for any help!

Perhaps the “Last Opened” Column is what you are looking for, or close enough? It has been a long standing grievance that sort options for found results are less ideal ideal on OS X.

You can sort of get around it and add a few more sort columns, by selecting “Show View Options” In the Finder menu, while selected on a file, setting on the “Date Created” and “Date Modified”, then setting that as a default for “Use as Defaults”.

This will propagate down to Spotlight find windows.

Give the other time based options a try, like, “was modified in the last 24 hours”, or whatever criteria you want.

You may want to look at Leap or Meta as more powerful ways to use spotlight.

I personally just never use it, If I need to find something from a few years ago, and I can only remember a fragment of what was said inside a document, it may come in handy. But then again, aside from emails, which I just search in the email application, file based data is pretty easy for me to locate.

For example, I worked on a Web site for a client a few years back, I would just go to my home folder then Documents -> Clients Done -> Company Name -> Project Name and within there would be some organizational structure.

Maybe you can explain your workflow in more detail, as what it is you are working on. If I were working on 10 projects at once, I would have 10 folders, each would contain that projects data, and only that projects data. I can certainly get to the files I need to get to a lot faster by organizing them ahead of time than I would ever get to them by letting Spotlight filter through an entire hard drives worth of data.

This will reveal the files container window, and also leave the search window intact.

Any new project I work on will be sloppily saved to the Desktop, or to a specific folder. In some way, I limit the scope of the work area to an area that will represent just the project I am working on.

Then I can use any normal finder window to sort by kind, size, name, whatever I want. This gets me out of using spotlight, as I know there is no need to search the entire system.

If you want to make it a little simpler, create a smart folder that is at the least limited to a specific set of areas in which you work. That speeds it up shows you a much more condensed list. You can also limit things like gif’s that are smaller than a certain byte size, so you do not get all the little icons that make up OS X’s display.

From there, I will as you do, look at the path in the bottom of the window. However, I usually just select the file, and hit command-R which will take me to that file. Unfortunately, it replaced the spotlight window, and does not inspire a new window, which means I have to start the search over again.

However, it does get me into a Finder window, where I can do my sorting as I want. I mostly do not use spotlight. I use it to find all files greater than 10MB, so I know which junk I left laying around that may need to be deleted.

Outside of that, I just developed a workflow that keeps my files in a place where I know they all are, so I need not use a broken tool to try to find them.

About all I can solidly suggest, is update to Snow Leopard, as these issues are apparently solved from what I have read.

Sadly, the one think you still can not do is sort by size, at least, not in Leopard, but I hear Snow Leopard does fix that issue.

Why are you being so pretentious? You suggested a barely helpful solution but still didn’t solve the problem. You didn’t answer the question of how to add a sort by SIZE column to the search results.

I don’t care to find out the size of the files one by one going through hundreds of files, I want to see what is the largest file quickly.

On my PC this was a breeze.

Every day I find another reason to hate this $5,000 piece of dung Mac Pro and OS.

And it’s still slower than my $1000 PC for many rudimentary tasks.

Your response was exactly what was needed and the unexpected promptness of reply, a pleasant surprise.

The nature of my time constraints while perusing your sites pages lent itself to frustration. I did read the main bodies of your blogs/pages, as they were pointed to via a search of “combined file size” and “multiple file size” etc, and I did also read most of the questions/responses as well. However, you are correct, you had answered this matter in a response that I had missed (Part 3 of this Finder series/macrussian). Yes, I am in agreement with what was mentioned.

The simplest solution, to me, is obviously the inclusion of a choice in the configuration of view options for the status line. Done. This is indeed rudimentary stuff, but then, as we agree, OSX/Mac is great but admittedly not perfect… but then, I guess that’s what feedback and progressive design is all about.

While I’m at it… can you specify what the “Calculate all sizes” choice relates to (found in the View Options when either List or Coverflow views are selected, as above)?

One final comment. While far from a newbie myself, sometimes it is sites like yours here, Scott, that users of varying experience goto to get an answer simply and quickly. Bravo. Further, while sifting through the various questions and responses on various pages here, it is clear that your efforts are effective and appreciated (oh, to wish for such a perfect world, lol) and there are no signs of any egos involved here.

Keep it up Scott!

The question: displaying of total/combined size of selected files in Finder – where and how?!?! The status line displays remaining hard drive space which is trivial at the moment when I need to know the total size of multiple files that I’m transferring or manipulating!

“Get Info” on groups of less than 11 selected files display multiple/individual “infos”, 11 or more selected files display fine in a single “info”?!?!

Fill in your parameters to define what size of file you are searching for.