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Swathe Select - tip on feature not requested

Posted: 11 Feb 2015 22:46
by Papoulka
I was gearing up to put in a request for what might be called "swathe select". That is, the ability to easily select multiple groups of files. I thought it would be a really cool new feature for XY.

However, fooling around with keystrokes showed it's already there, and in Windows Explorer too. The odd thing is that "nobody" seems to know about it. Meaning that I didn't (not a strong test...) and much more surprisingly I find no mention on the web.

Anyway, FWIW here's the method:

Left-click to select the first item of an intended group.
Hold Shift and select the last item. The group will be highlighted.

Hold Ctrl and select the first item of the second intended group.
[now the special bit...]
Hold Ctrl & Shift and select the last item of the second intended group.
Both groups will be highlighted.

Apologies if y'all knew this before, but I was tickled to find it.

Re: Swathe Select - tip on feature not requested

Posted: 11 Feb 2015 22:56
by avsfan
Didn't know this one -- very cool! Thanks for sharing!

Re: Swathe Select - tip on feature not requested

Posted: 11 Feb 2015 23:26
by PeterH
...hold Ctrl and click a file in the middle of a selected group: it will be deselected.

Re: Swathe Select - tip on feature not requested

Posted: 11 Feb 2015 23:44
by Marco
Papoulka wrote:I was gearing up to put in a request for what might be called "swathe select". That is, the ability to easily select multiple groups of files. I thought it would be a really cool new feature for XY.

However, fooling around with keystrokes showed it's already there, and in Windows Explorer too. The odd thing is that "nobody" seems to know about it. Meaning that I didn't (not a strong test...) and much more surprisingly I find no mention on the web.

Anyway, FWIW here's the method:

Left-click to select the first item of an intended group.
Hold Shift and select the last item. The group will be highlighted.

Hold Ctrl and select the first item of the second intended group.
[now the special bit...]
Hold Ctrl & Shift and select the last item of the second intended group.
Both groups will be highlighted.

Apologies if y'all knew this before, but I was tickled to find it.
:shock: Didn't know that, thanks for sharing!
And I just did some tests... you can repeat the second part as many times as you want!

Re: Swathe Select - tip on feature not requested

Posted: 12 Feb 2015 00:16
by highend
This is standard Windows (explorer) behavior since ... forever. Even Windows XP had it :)

Re: Swathe Select - tip on feature not requested

Posted: 12 Feb 2015 00:53
by PeterH
highend wrote:This is standard Windows (explorer) behavior since ... forever. Even Windows XP had it :)
I'd bet Win 3.1, too?

Though:
- I can't really remember :whistle:
- not everyone here was with it that time :roll:

Re: Swathe Select - tip on feature not requested

Posted: 12 Feb 2015 04:35
by bdeshi
and not just Windows...