However, if you drag a file from your Desktop to an external hard disk, you’ll see that the file remains in its original location this file has been copied. The file is no longer on the Desktop, and is found only in the Documents folder. If you’re in the Finder, and you drag a file from, say, your Desktop to your Documents folder, or any other folder on the same disk or volume, you move the file. The difference between copying and moving files
- If you’ve lost access to the Finder because your Mac is on the blink, you might be able to use the command line to troubleshoot the problem.
- You can copy or move multiple files using wildcards.
- These files, which can contain settings for certain apps or parts of the Mac, contain a dot (.) before their names, and the Finder doesn’t show them.
- You can copy or move files that are hidden in the Finder.
- You can copy or move files from one location to another without opening windows in the Finder.
- That will import and copy those images very neatly. In your case though, after you do the search you can simply use Quick Look or Finder preview (View, Show Preview) to look at the images and drag the ones you want to import into Photos directly into Photos. You should see a + mark under the cursor as you drag, indicating the items will be copied, not moved. So create a new folder in another Finder window, and then hold the Option key down and drag them all to the new folder. Now you don't want to move those files, right? You want them to stay in ~/Library/Messages/Attachments so as not mess up your Messages app. You can do that by selecting the first one and then Command+a. Or, if you really want everything something like "File Size is greater than 0 KB" will work.
You could do "Kind is Image" for all images. Then enter some search criteria that will get you everything you want. At the top you should see "Search:" and then "This Mac" and "Attachments." Make sure you select the latter so you are just searching in this folder. Go to the Attachments folder in the Finder. One way to do that is with a simple search.