How To Figure Out Where You Just Saved a File On Your Mac

When you quickly save a new document, it can be easy to not pay attention to where the file was saved. You can use these methods to locate the file. This also helps when you download a file, save a mail attachment or export a file.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you where you can find a file that you just created but you can't remember which folder you put it in.
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So a common problem people run into from time to time is when they quickly create a new document in an app, save the file, and then exit that app and then they can't remember where they saved that file. After all you're not always paying attention to the exact folder that you're in when you're doing the Save command. But it's pretty easy to find a file that you just created or even one that you created a little while ago. So for instance here I am in Pages and say I have a great idea for a story. I create a new document. I quickly write the story and then I decide to Save. I just do a quick Command S and I call it something and Save it. Now I close that file, Quit Pages, and I think to myself, wait a minute where did I save that file! Where is it located! 
I look in the Finder and it's not in my Documents folder. I look into maybe the most reasonable place for it and I don't see it there either. Where is it? Well, there are a bunch of different methods you could use to quickly find that file. So one thing you could do is just go right back into that app. I'm going to relaunch Pages here. Pages is actually going to show me Open Dialogue and there's the file. So here I can see exactly where I saved it. I put it in the Personal folder in my Documents folder. So now I know where it is. If that's not where it belongs I could always select it here and do Command R and that will open up that location in the Finder and now I can move it around. 
Now even if you don't get that Open window there you could always go to File, and then Open Recent. You see it there as the last document you opened or maybe a few back. So you can open it there. Once you have the document opened then you can click here at the top and see where it was saved. You can also go to File, and then go to Duplicate but hold the Option key down that changes it to Save As. That usually points you to that same location. But you don't actually have to save the file here. You can just use this as a way to see where the last place Pages saved the document was and be able to then locate that in the Finder. 
But there's a way to do it without even using the app. It's in the Finder you Open a New Finder Window. You may find, under Favorites here on the left, a Recent folder. Now I don't have that here. I've turned that off. That's okay. I can always get to it by going to Go and then Recents. Then using Recents here you can usually see that file right at the top. If you worked on other files since then it maybe further down but it's pretty easy to locate. Now this isn't going to show you where it is right off the bat. If you've got the Path Bar turned on here, that would be under View and there's Show/Hide Path Bar there, then you could see where the selected file is located. But you could also select it there and use that same Command R and it would take you right to that folder.
You also have the ability to look at Recents across all apps by going to the Apple Menu and you have Recent Items. So here you would see Applications and Documents and then there's that document there. It's going to sort these alphabetically, not in the order they were created so you have to kind of know what it is you named the file. 
Then, of course, you can always just Search using either Spotlight or the Finder. So using Spotlight, Command Space, if you know the name of the file, of course, you can search for that. It will quickly return the results that you want. Here I can see a Pages document, today just before now, so I know that's the file I want. I could use the Tab key to see a Preview of it and Command R will take me to it. Of course I could also just double click to Open it. You could use the Finder for that as well. You could click on the Search button here or do Command F and do a search. Now keep in mind that you could search in the Finder and in Spotlight for the contents of the file, not just the name of the file. So if you don't even remember what you named it, maybe you left it as untitled or something like that, if you know some words that are in it you can easily search for them. So I can search for a word that I used in there and, sure enough, it returns that document here. You could see this is the one and I didn't even have to know the name. I just used a word that I knew would be unique in there or use a combination of words and it should be near the top.
Now a related problem to this is when you Export a version of a document. A lot of times this happens in an image editing app when you're exporting something from there. But also it could happen in Pages. You have, of course, the ability to Save up here but you have Export options like here Export To PDF and you could easily export a PDF and not realize where it was you saved it. Now the problem here is that if I go to Export again or I go to Save As or Open it's going to go to the location of the current file.It's not going to reveal to me the place where I exported that file and I'm not going to see it under Recent Items. I'm just going to see the Pages file there. I'm not going to see it in Pages under Recents either. But I will see it in the Finder under Recents. You could see here that PDF is there. Also it will show up when I search in either Spotlight or in the Finder for either the name or something inside of it. 
Another time people loose track of where they saved a file is when they're actually downloading something from the web or perhaps an attachment in Mail. If you download a file on a webpage like that it will usually go into the Downloads folder. But it doesn't have to. In Safari you can go to Safari Preferences and in General you can find the File Download Location here and you can see it's in the Downloads Folder or if I selected another it would be there. But you can also, of course, choose by Control, clicking on something. You say download linked file as and you can set a location for it so it can go somewhere else. In that case you can always click on the downloads button here and you can see the downloads. Click the magnifying glass and that will take you right to that document in its location. 
So the same thing here in the Mail app. You've got under Mail Preferences and then under General you've got your setting for where downloads are normally saved. But you could always do File and then Save Attachments and then save them anywhere you want or Control click on the image or document and Save Attachment and then you can save it some other location like I'll put it in the Documents folder here. Let's say I forget where I've saved that. It helps to go back again and look under Save Attachment and you'll see it remembers that location. The same thing if you go here to File, Save Attachments it remembers that last location that something was saved. So you can figure out where it went.
So you can see there's lots of different ways to find out where a document it if you've forgotten where you saved it.

Comments: 12 Responses to “How To Figure Out Where You Just Saved a File On Your Mac”

Frank Scully

4 years ago

This happens to to me occasionally. I use winder and Cmd +F and last modified date is "today"

Rocky Berlier

I'm trying to figure out why command+R isn't taking me to the enclosed folder, but rather rotating the image. Do you know why it's doing this?

Gary Rosenzweig

Rocky: Command+R only works if you are viewing search results. If you are just looking at the file in the folder where it is located, then you are already at that location.

Gary: I'm in the Recents location (as you show here) and pressing Command+R rotates the image instead of showing the enclosed folder.

Rocky: Not sure why it is not working for you. Maybe try closing that Finder window and opening another. Try different files. Experiment and try different things. Works for me in Recents in all situations.

I have had occasions where I mistyped the name or have copy& pasted (move option cmd + opt V) and discover it is missing. This is because I was not correctly positioned in finder & was at say root level. I found the only way to locate it because of spelling error was to search by date added, date created, or date changed. Even this is NOT 100 % if the file is on an external disk AND that disk is excluded from spotlight. I discovered an app called Find any File which does not depend on index

Rick Grossman

Great ideas! If you end up with a list of files from this, examine each with the spacebar. When you escape, you don't have an extra window and the list is exactly as it was including folder, view, sort & filter. You can work your way down a list without needing to scroll down and wonder if you looked at each file or not. I'm adding Go/Recent to my first choice when searching.

Ron Housley

when there's a PDF that arrives inside a text message and then you elect to open with Preview, I can't find where that file is in Finder --- it must be in some Library folder somewhere, right?

Ron: It isn't really saved anywhere until you save it.

Gail

I was just racking my brain less than 24 hours ago about this. Thank you, Gary!

Lawrence Moore

3 years ago

Can I find docs I've photographed, named, and tagged in Photos with the Finder--i.e. without opening Photos? I often photograph documents with my iPhone, which transfers them to Photos on my desktop Mac. At a later time, I may need to find which Photo Library they're in before opening Photos.

Lawrence: No, you have to do that search in Photos.

Comments Closed.

How To Figure Out Where You Just Saved a File On Your Mac

Comments: 12 Responses to “How To Figure Out Where You Just Saved a File On Your Mac”

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