2.7. The Trash

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No single element of the Macintosh interface is as recognizable or famous as the Trash can, which now appears at the end of the Dock.

You can discard almost any icon by dragging it onto the Trash icon (which actually resembles a waste- basket , not a trash can, but let's not quibble). When the tip of your arrow cursor touches the Trash icon, the little wastebasket turns black. When you release the mouse, you're well on your way to discarding whatever it was you dragged. As a convenience, Mac OS X even replaces the empty-wastebasket icon with a wastebasket-filled-with-crumpled-up-papers icon, to let you know there's something in there.


Tip: Learn the keyboard alternative to dragging something to the Trash: Highlight the icon and then press -Delete. This technique is not only far faster than dragging, but requires far less precision, especially if you have a large screen. Mac OS X does all the Trash-targeting for you.

Figure 2-10. Top left: In the Labels tab of the Preferences dialog box, you can change the predefined label text. Each label can be up to 31 letters and spaces long.
Bottom right: Now your list and column views reveal meaningful text tags instead of color names .


2.7.1. Rescuing Files and Folders from the Trash

File and folder icons sit in the Trash foreveror until you choose Finder Empty Trash, whichever comes first.

If you haven't yet emptied the Trash, you can open its window by clicking the wastebasket icon once. Now you can review its contents: icons that you've placed on the waiting list for extinction . If you change your mind, you can rescue any of these items by dragging them out of the Trash window.


Tip: If dragging something to the Trash was the last thing you did, you can press -Zthe keyboard shortcut of the Edit Undo command. This not only removes it from the Trash, but also returns it to the folder from which it came. This trick works even if the Trash window isnt open.

2.7.2. Emptying the Trash I: Quick and Easy

If you're confident that the items in the Trash window are worth deleting, use any of these three options:

  • Choose Finder Empty Trash.

  • Press Shift- -Delete. Or, if you'd just as soon not bother with the "Are you sure?" message, throw the Option key in there, too.

  • Control-click the wastebasket icon (or just click it and hold the mouse button down for a moment); choose Empty Trash from the shortcut menu.


Tip: This last method has two advantages. First, the Mac doesn't bother asking "Are you sure?" (If you're clicking right on the Trash and choosing Empty Trash from the pop-up menu, it's pretty darned obvious you are sure.) Second, this method nukes any locked files without making you unlock them first.

If you use either of the first two methods , the Macintosh asks you to confirm your decision (see Figure 2-11). Click OK.

Either way, Mac OS X now deletes those files from your hard drive.

2.7.3. Emptying the Trash II: Secure and Forever

When you empty the Trash as described above, each Trashed icon sure looks like it disappears. The truth is, though, that the data in each file is still on the hard drive.

Figure 2-11. Top: Your last warning. Mac OS X doesn't tell you how many items are in the Trash or how much disk space they take up.
Bottom: The Get Info window for a locked file. Locking a file in this way isn't military-level security by any stretchany passing evildoer can unlock the file in the same way. But it does trigger an "operation cannot be completed" warning when you try to put it into the Trashor indeed when you try to drag it into any other folderproviding at least one layer of protection against mistakes.


Yes, the space occupied by the dearly departed is now marked with an internal "This space available" message, and in time, new files that you save may overwrite that spot. But in the meantime, some future eBay buyer of your Macor, more imminently, a savvy family member or office matecould use a program like Norton Utilities to resurrect those deleted files. (In even more dire cases, companies like DriveSavers. com can use sophisticated clean-room techniques to recover crucial informationfor several hundred dollars, of course.)

That notion doesn't sit well with certain groups, like government agencies, international spies, and the paranoid . As far as they're concerned , deleting a file should really, really delete it, irrevocably, irretrievably, and forever.

Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 have a new command, therefore, called Secure Empty Trash. When you choose this command from the Finder menu, the Mac doesn't just obliterate the parking spaces around the dead file. It actually records new information over the oldrandom 0's and 1's. Pure static gibberish.

The process takes longer than the normal Empty Trash command, of course. But when it absolutely, positively has to be gone from this earth for good (and you're absolutely , positively sure you'll never need that file again), Secure Empty Trash is secure indeed.

2.7.4. Locked Files: The Next Generation

By highlighting a file or folder, choosing File Get Info, and turning on the Locked checkbox, you protect that file or folder from accidental deletion (see Figure 2-11 at bottom). A little padlock icon appears on the corner of the full- size icon, also shown in Figure 2-11.

Mac OS X doesn't even let you put a locked icon into the Trashor any other folder. You can't put the icon of an open program into the Trash, either.

If something that's already in the Trash turns out to be locked, click and hold on the Trash itself. Now, when you choose Empty Trash from its shortcut pop-up menu, Mac OS X empties the Trash without warnings, locked files and all.

GEM IN THE ROUGH
Opening Things in the Trash

Now and then, it's very useful to see what some document in the Trash is before committing it to oblivionand the only way to do that is to open it.

Trouble is, you can't open it by double-clicking; you'll get nothing but an error message.

Or at least that's what Apple wants you to think.

There is, of course, a workaround: Drag the document onto the icon of a program that can open it. That is, if a file called Don't Read Me.txt is in the Trash, you can drag it onto, say, the Word or TextEdit icon in your Dock.

The document dutifully pops open on the screen. Inspect, close, and then empty the Trash (or rescue the document).


Of course, the other alternative is to unlock what's in the Trash. Fortunately, there's a quick way to do so. Click the Trash icon to open its window, then highlight the icons you want to unlock (or choose Edit Select All).

Now press Option- -I (or press Option as you choose File Show Inspector). Turn off the Locked checkbox in the resulting Info window. (Yes, you can lock or unlock a mass of files at once.) Now you can send the newly unprotected files to data heaven without any fancy tricks.

(If you're still having trouble emptying the Trash, see Chapter 17 for some helpful Unix commands.)

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Mac OS X. The Missing Manual
Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)
ISBN: 0596153287
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 506
Authors: David Pogue

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