Questions about moving files efficiently

Hi,

I was wondering if you could help with a workflow issue I have around moving files efficiently.

My folders are organised into clients, and within that, there are folders for each project, and a notes folder in each of those.

When processing the inbox, I’ll often find that Classify gives me a hit on the right client, but not exactly the right notes folder. So I tend to just hit Ctrl-C and at least put it in the root of that client.

I then jump to that note in its new location (I do back, then command-r to reveal it, once moved). Finally, I want to drag this into the Notes folder.

Quite often, there are lots of files in the current folder, and in order to drag the file up to Notes, I have to scroll while dragging. It’s slow and error-prone.

Is it possible to hit a button to “reveal” this current location in the sidebar? That would make it much easier as I could drag a file to the sidebar and straight into the relevant subfolder.

Or could the “Move To…” functionality be made to show the sub-groups of the current group? At the moment, it shows all the databases, collapsed, so I’d have to manually expand and navigate through. At the moment, if I do a “Move To” and type “Notes”, it’ll select a completely different folder called “Notes”. Ideally, it’d select the one closest to this location (e.g. a subfolder), in preference to one completely elsewhere in the folder structure.

Even better still… If I use “Move To…” from the inbox and type a client’s name, it will find just the root client folder. But if I could then type space and “Notes” it would be great if it would find a subfolder that matches. In other words, it would such paths rather than just the specific folder names in isolation. It would be nice that if I type “Smiths Notes” then it would fine Clients → Smiths → Notes

Failing that - is there “copy” and “paste” functionality for files (Windows-style!) or some other way?

I suppose the only other workaround is using two Windows, and drag files between them. To make this easy, it would be good to have a File → New Window → Here command.

Tom

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You could try this script.

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Thanks, Pete! That works nicely, and is a good workaround. Another related workaround is to use Workspaces. That works quite nicely - I save a workspace which has some folders that I often go to.

I still definitely think that some of the other feature requests would be very useful - especially having the Move To functionality being location aware (showing you matching subfolders first).

No promises but the request is noted.

You could set your notes groups’ aliases to e.g. the location plus name and then use the classify search. Typing 1 (which would be a client or project name in your case) then yields all groups whose name or aliases contains 1

That’s possible with alisases. Try it manually. If it is what you’re looking for a script could set the aliases.

That’s a fantastic idea, pete31 — thanks! I hadn’t thought of using aliases in this way. I’ll give this a go…