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Can't cut and paste in finder

M

MrVegas

macrumors regular
Original poster
This is really strange.

I have some MP3 albums in a folder on my hard drive. When I select them to move them to another folder on the hard drive I cannot select "CUT" ... it is greyed out.

Can anyone help?
 
This is a standard Mac behavior. The "normal" way of doing things would, as the previous poster stated, be to drag and drop the file, possibly using the desktop as an intermediate step, if the folder you want to move the file to isn't immediately available.
 
stridey said:
This is a standard Mac behavior. The "normal" way of doing things would, as the previous poster stated, be to drag and drop the file, possibly using the desktop as an intermediate step, if the folder you want to move the file to isn't immediately available.
Click to expand...

But if the folder you want isn't immediately available, you can also setup Expose to show Desktop from one "hot corner" of your display, drag the files to this corner, wait for the desktop to show up, then move the mouse over the folder you want to open -- by default MacOS X uses "spring loaded folders" so after a short pause the folder will automatically open (no additional clicking needed by you) and any sub-folders you need to get into will also "spring load" if you hover over them. When you get to where you want the files moved to, just release the mouse button.
 
i was so shocked when i installed tiger and saw that apple had STILL not enabled "cut and paste" in finder.

the worse this is that there is a "cut" option if you go to "finder>edit" it just appears to be blanked out, like almost everything in quicktime is (before you go pro)

so are apple going to release something called "finder pro" that cost $30 for the privilege of having the ability to "cut and paste" a file.
 
bobx2001 said:
i was so shocked when i installed tiger and saw that apple had STILL not enabled "cut and paste" in finder.
Click to expand...

I think this is a specific choice on Apple's part: they don't want you to accidentally "cut" a file and lose it in your clipboard. Theoretically, any file you delete in OS X goes to the trash before it dissapears completely, so if you cut your file you'd want a copy of it put in the trash. On the other hand, if you used cut and paste whenever you wanted to move a file, you'd constantly be filling your trash with copies of files. Apple avoids this problem by simply not implementing cut in the Finder.
 
Well, instead of "Cut", Apple could put "Move" in the menu.

That being said, I got used to moving files the drag-n-drop way, and now I don't miss cut & paste.
 
When the command prompt is simpler than the GUI

Key features lacking in finder:
1) lack of tabbed browser support
2) disabled(!) cut/paste support

I acknowledge its possible to drag/drop folders to move them, however the suggestion that the desktop can be used as an intermediate step is not a good one where files are located on different disk partitions - or within a disk image.

Cut/Paste has be available in Windows and all flavours of Linux - I don't see any argument for preventing it's use. With reference to an earlier comment the files are not "cut" immediately, but simply flagged to move. So if files are never pasted they are not lost.

Cut/Paste is safer in my opinion especially when working with a laptop on your knee or using the trackpad where control of the pointer isn't perfect.

A recent example:
I needed to move some photos up a couple of parent directories - it was simpler for me to drop into a command prompt than open another instance of Finder and carefully drag the files across.
 
time to address the problem

Rather than simply point hapless users to yet more forum posts - isn't it time for this problem to be fixed? I still can't believe anyone would defend against its implementation, and it's not a good reflection on this forum if such an obvious deficiency once highlighted isn't addressed.

Those who don't believe in file cut/paste and choose not to use it.

There are other more obscure, more difficult to define issues I've experienced with the Mac - but this discussion does not fill me with confidence that it'll be worth raising them.

A disappointed Mac user
🙁
 
Like miles said, get over it. This is not a problem to be fixed. If you think cut and paste is such a vital method of moving files, you can use Windows.

Mac has never done it that way and probably never will. </thread>
 
tc7 said:
Rather than simply point hapless users to yet more forum posts - isn't it time for this problem to be fixed? I still can't believe anyone would defend against its implementation, and it's not a good reflection on this forum if such an obvious deficiency once highlighted isn't addressed.
Click to expand...

It isn't my job to defend Apple against its implementation
Nor do I have any power to address "such an obvious deficiency"

This is just OSX and how it works
I don't believe Apple is ignorant of the situation, nor are they befuddled on how to resolve it
This is a conscious choice on their part in the user interface and experience
No one in Cuppertino is going read this thread and go "doh" how did we miss this

You don't agree with it
Ok, you disagree, but most people go through their day without giving it second thought
If this is such a critical issue for a user, then perhaps a Mac is not the right choice

The same is true of sizing windows only from the bottom right corner
Or not being able to delete selected items from the trash
 
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