10 Mac File Open Dialog Tips

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some tips for using the Open File Dialogues on your Mac 

So there are many ways to open files on your Mac. For instance you can just double click the file in the Finder, it will launch the app that goes with the file and show you the document. But often we just open files using the File Open Dialogue in an app. For instance here I am in Pages and if I go to File Open or just Command O this is called the Open File Dialogue. It's a dialogue  asking you for something and then you're communicating back to it what you want. In this case, which file would you like to open?, and then you select a file. The window looks a lot like the Finder window prompting a lot of people to actually just call this the Finder. But it is actually an open file dialogue. 

I'm in Pages here, not the Finder. But a lot of the functionality is the same. Starting with the left Sidebar. Notice inhere the left Sidebar you've got Recents, you've got Favorites, you've got Location, all the things you see if you go to the Finder and open up a new Finder window you'll see similar items here in the left Sidebar. In fact the Favorites section of the left Sidebar is something you can customize. That will be reflected here in the Open Dialogue. Notice it is the same thing. For instance if I often want to use File, Open in Pages to open something in this folder here I can add it to the left sidebar under Favorites, like that. Then I'll see that same folder here in Open Dialogues. I can simply click on that folder there, under Favorites in the Open Dialogue and go to it. It's the quickest way to get to folders that have the file you want. Don't be afraid to change it often. If you're working a lot this week to a particular folder add it to Favorites. It will be available to you in the left Sidebar in the Finder and in Open, Save, and Export dialogues as well. 

You also have other Finder functionality. For instance this display here showing you which folder you're in. That's functional. You can click on it and you can go up levels. So I can go up one level to the Documents Folder and up another level to iCloud Drive. So you can see, not only the full path, but jump to any of those. So I can jump to Document there. There's a keyboard shortcut for this in the Finder, Command Up. It works here as well. So I'll use Command and the Up Arrow  and you can see I go up one level. 

Now this Menu also provides a list of Recent Places. So these are folders that you've recently accessed. So this can be a really useful way to get to a file you want. Not necessarily looking in Recents here which shows you a list of all files that you have recently accessed. You can sort them by Date Modified, and maybe that could be useful. But sometimes it can be more useful to look at Location and jump to a specific folder here that you recently used to find the file you want. It can be particularly useful if you can't find the name of the file you want but you know you were working with it recently and will probably recognize the folder. 

Now you can also search here. You've got a little Search Box or you can also use Command F to jump right to it and start typing. Here you can search for the name of a file and here you can select file name or content to decide how you want to search. Also at the top it will show you Search and it will show you it's only looking in the folder your were currently in and all the sub-folders that are in it. In this case it doesn't turn up anything so I can turn this back and have it search my entire Mac for things that match this. Once you find what you want you can select it and notice you will see a path under here to see where it is. That can help you confirm you have the right file but you can also click on the folder there, like that, to jump right into the folder. 

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You can use the Open File Dialogue completely with the Keyboard. So here in Pages I'll just do Command O to Open. Now if I use the down arrow key it is immediately going to go to the first file. I can continue to use the down arrow to go down and the up arrow key to go up. I can even press a letter on the keyboard to jump to the first file with that letter. That works particularly well if you're in List View here. You can see I've got List View, not Icon View, selected and I have everything sorted by name. So now if I just click D it will jump down to the first file starting with that name. But you can even type more than that. For instance here I've got several folders starting with E. If I wanted to get to this folder I can type de and you can see I get to it. Now with the Folder selected I can press Return and it will dive down into that folder. Remember I can use Command Up Arrow to go back up. When I find a file I want I can simply press return and it will open it. I can also use Command Period to cancel or the Escape Key to cancel the open dialogue. 

Now let's say you're in an app like Pages here and you use Command O to bring up the Open Dialogue. You're not where you want to be. But you can see where you want to be in a Finder Window, like for instance this folder right here. You can Drag & Drop a folder right to an Open Dialogue. It will jump to that location. You can do the same thing with a file. So, for instance, I could look in this folder here and there is a file. I can Drag & Drop that into the Open Dialogue. It jumps to that folder with that file selected.

Now when you're in the Finder you may know there is a bunch of keyboard shortcuts associated with specific folders. Look in the Go Menu and you can see them. The Desktop is Shift Command D. Documents is Shift Command O. The Downloads Folder is Option Command L. If you are used to using these in the Finder note that you can use them in Open Dialogues as well. So here I am in this Open Dialogue if I use Shift Command D I jump to the Desktop. Shift Command O I jump to Documents and Option Command L and I jump to Downloads. Another way to navigate in the Finder is to use GO and then Go to Folder or Shift Command G. Then you can type something here, either a full path or a partial path and it will look under Recents and find a folder you mean. So I can start typing something like, you can see it is selected there. I hit Return and I go to that folder in the Finder. Well guess what? That works in Open Dialogues as well with Command G. It brings up that same thing and then I can type something, like that, and jump to that location. 

Now I quickly mentioned before you can go to Icon, List, or Column View here. Even the keyboard shortcuts that are in the Finder work for this. Command 1 for Icon View. Command 2 for List View. Command 3 for Column View. When in List View you also can Sort for any columns. So I can click on Date Modified, Sort By Date Modified and click again and it reverses the Sort Order. If I Control Click, Right Click, or two-finger click anywhere in these column headings I can add additional columns as well. It will remember them for the next time I use this Open Dialogue in this app. 

Now if you're not sure which file you want you may want to preview the file first. You don't have to go to the Finder first to do that. You can do it right here in the Open Dialogues because Quick Look works. You can use the Spacebar and it will show you a preview of the file selected. You can even leave the Quick Look Window open, just move it to the side there, select another file and it will preview that file for you. So, for instance, here in an Image Editing App, I can go to File Open. I can't remember which is the one I want. I can select one, hit the Spacebar, and then I'm just going to use Down Arrow to go through each one here. When I find the image I want can hit the Spacebar again and I can see behind Quick Look what it was  I selected.

Here's a couple of bonus ones. If you want to switch from Open Dialogue to the Finder, say there is something else you want to do in the same folder, with any file selected you can just do Command R or Control click, right click, or two-finger click to bring up the Context Menu and select Show In Finder. Now it opens a Finder Window right to that file. This works in Search as well. So in the Open Dialogue I can Search for something. Then when I find something that I want that maybe isn't even a document for this app I can select it here and then do Command R and it will open up that folder in the Finder with that file selected. 

Note you can also do a lot of other things in the Context Menu. For instance you can bring in the file, right here in the Open Dialogue, without even opening the file or going to the Finder. You can also Delete the file. A particularly useful one might be to duplicate it. So you are bound to open a file and decide you don't want to mess with the original. You can duplicate it right here and get a new copy of it. At that point you can rename it with the Context Menu in Rename or just have that file selected and return to open the copy you made. 

So I hope you found some of these tips useful. Thanks for watching.