Endless spinning beachball

[AlanTuba]

I was editing a rather large folder on my hard drive (I am running Mac OS 10.10.4, Yosemite) and went looking for a shortcut to open all the folders inside a given folder. (Found it, it is option+the open-folder caret beside a folder in list mode.) Apparently this was a task that required a lot of memory and took awhile to complete.

Now the folder is open permanently and the beachball is spinning; I cannot open any folders on my desktop, or close the one I edited. I cannot access the finder menu. Tried turning off the computer but when I turned it back on the beachball was still spinning.

What can I try next?

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

You could try relaunching Finder. Try pressing Opt Command Esc … be warned that by relaunching Finder you will lose any unsaved changes ...

 

[AlanTuba]

Opt+Command+Esc brought up the Force Quit window, and I went ahead and relaunched the finder. What happened next was that the folder re-opened (on its own) and the spinning beachball resumed. Did this several times actually. Once the beachball resumed, the Force Quit window showed that the finder was 'not responding.'

A good try, but didn't eliminate the problem.