How to copy file to a drive full of folders?

[pjny]

Hi,

I have a drive full of folders and have a problem dragging and copying from the laptop drive to a window listing the folders on the external drive. I have about 30 folders on the external drive.

How do I prevent this from happening? I just want to copy to the root of the external drive. I can do this if there are files on root directory drive and I drag the file/folder I want to drag onto a file and let go.

Thanks.

 

[Fishrrman]

I am assuming that the drive to which you're copying the file is mounted and appears on your desktop, is this correct?

If so, just "drag and drop" the file onto the drive's (unopened) icon.
Then, when you actually open the icon, you'll see the file's icon "at the top level".

Another suggestion:
DISABLE the "spring-loaded folder" feature that automatically causes folders to open when the mouse pointer is hovered over them.

You can do that by doing this:

1. Open the Terminal app in the utilities folder
2. Copy the following command:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.springing.enabled -bool false
3. Paste this into the terminal window and hit return, then quite terminal.

Does any of the above help?

 

[MacUser2525]

I am assuming that the drive to which you're copying the file is mounted and appears on your desktop, is this correct?

You can do that by doing this:

1. Open the Terminal app in the utilities folder
2. Copy the following command:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.springing.enabled -bool false
3. Paste this into the terminal window and hit return, then quite terminal.

Does any of the above help?

If he is going to have Terminal open then may as well type in cp followed by drag and drop of file to Terminal type in another space and drag and drop the drive icon onto terminal with a hit enter key to copy the file to the drive as the path to it should have been automatically put there, if doing directory then start with cp -r .