Selecting Icons

To highlight a single icon in preparation for printing, opening, duplicating, or deleting, click the icon once. (In a list or column view, as described in | . Selecting Icons To highlight a single icon in preparation for printing opening duplicating or deleting click the icon once. In a list or column view as described in Chapter 1 you can also click on any visible piece of information about that file its size kind date modified and so on. Both the icon and the name darken in a uniquely Leopardish way. Tip You can change the color of the oval highlighting that appears around the name of a selected icon. Choose System Preferences click Appearance and use the Highlight Color pop-up menu. Figure 2-3. You can highlight several icons simultaneously by dragging a box around them. To do so drag from outside of the target icons diagonally across them right creating a translucent gray rectangle as you go. Any icons or icon names touched by this rectangle are selected when you release the mouse. If you press the Shift or key as you do this any previously highlighted icons remain selected. That much may seem obvious. But most first-time Mac users have no idea how to manipulate more than one icon at a time an essential survival skill in a graphic interface like the Mac s. . Selecting by Clicking To highlight multiple files in preparation for moving or copying use one of these techniques To highlight all the icons. To select all the icons in a window press -A the equivalent of the Edit Select All command . To highlight several icons by dragging. You can drag diagonally to highlight a group of nearby icons as shown in Figure 2-3. In a list view in fact you don t even have to drag over the icons themselves your cursor can touch any part of any file s row like its modification date or file size. Tip If you include a particular icon in your diagonally dragged group by mistake click it to remove it from the selected cluster. To highlight consecutive icons in a list. If you re looking at the contents of a window in list view or column view you can drag vertically over the file and folder names to highlight a group of consecutive