### Hints and Shortcuts

# Tips for Locating Files and Directories

Tricks for finding things quickly.

Click image links for full view. | ### ### Type to Find and Select This tip is very useful when you want to avoid scrolling and scanning through several files! Place your cursor in an Icon View of the directory that contains the file you want, and click once in the Icon View background. Then begin typing the name of the file or directory you want to select. You hear a "ding" sound if a match is made; if there is more than one item that matches what you have typed, you hear a "tick" sound. Once the icon is selected, press Enter to open it. Note: Press Esc to clear what you've typed in and start again. |
| ### ### Use File QuickFind From the Toolchest, choose Find > File QuickFind. Type the name of the file, directory, or application you need in the field provided. If the file or folder icon resides in your home directory or search path, type the icon name only. For example, to pull up the icon for a file named report1 in your home directory, type: `report1.`The icon appears in the File QuickFind window, and you can drag it another location. Note: If the item is not in your home directory or search path, you need to type in the full pathname, such as: `/usr/people/isis/Reports/report1`
| ### ### Use Automatic Name Completion A helpful feature for navigating through directories is called pathname completion. Type the first few letters of a directory name into the pathname field in an Icon View window (as shown in picture), then press the space bar on your keyboard. If there is one directory in the window that begins with those letters, the directory name is automatically completed and the directory's contents are displayed. Note: If there is more than one directory that begins with the same letters, you need to type more letters to distinguish the directory you want.
| ### ### Preview the Contents of Files This is a way to get a quick view of the contents of a file, without actually opening it. In an Icon View window, choose Options > Show Content Viewer. A viewer opens at the bottom of the Icon View. Click once on a file to display a read-only version of the file in the content viewer. This works for text files, images (as shown in the picture on the left), movies, sound files, VRML, WebJumper files, and HTML files!
| ### ### Use the Icon View Search To search for files by specific name or text content, choose Actions > Search/Filter Files in an Icon View of the directory in which the file resides.
| ### ### View "Thumbnails" of Image Files To replace each image file icon with a "thumbnail-size" picture of the image, choose View > as Thumbnail Images. Use the Icon View thumbwheel to enlarge the thumbnail images if they're not recognizable at the default size.
Click image links for full view. | home | shortcuts | locating | productivity | troubleshooting |