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Reordering unsorted lists Apps
This applies to any situation where there is a list not automatically ordered by the application or the OS, such as playlists in iTunes or the queued transfer list in thoth.

I find in OS X it can be a real pain sometimes if you have a very long list and you want to move something to a spot several pages away in the list. Instead of moving everything by selecting it and dragging it the whole way, just select what you want to move. Then scroll to the spot in the list where you want the items moved. Command-click an item at that spot to make a discontiguous selection, and then move that item just enough that the insertion line shows up.

When you let go of the mouse, all the items you selected will move to the target spot. Depending on how you did it, you may have to put the one item you selected second back to its spot, but I find this is still far less work than dragging the moved items manually would be.

[Editor's note: In all my years of Mac usage, I had never heard of this method of rearranging a long list of items through a non-contiguous selection - quite useful!]
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Reordering unsorted lists | 3 comments | Create New Account
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Reordering list-fantastic
Authored by: MtnBiker on May 17, '02 02:51:42PM

Not sure I understood this hint, because it's easy to use and hard to describe.

But I just used it to reorganize my Favorites in Explorer. Great because the new links one creates end up on the bottom and the folders you use most are usually at the top (where you would put them if you used them a lot). I selected an item near the top and the new item at the bottom, went back to the top item (using slider), jiggled the upper item and as advertised the new item was right below the upper item.



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dis-contiguous selections
Authored by: mervTormel on May 17, '02 03:14:04PM

i don't think dis-contiguous selection has been around very long. in the past, it was implemented per application, but now it sounds like the core selection routines have this built in switch. that's a good thing. hope more developers use it.



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Excellent!
Authored by: Mithrandir on May 18, '02 03:26:30AM

This is one of the best hints I have seen here in a long while! Kudos to you my friend! Dragging an item through a long list on my PowerBook (which OS X so kindly lacks video acceleration for) is nightmarishly slow! This will make life much easier!

Thanks!

M



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