Using The Core File Menu Commands On a Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at the Core file menu commands on a Mac. 

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So in any app where you can create, modify, and save documents you're going to have some very similar commands in the File Menu. For instance, let's look at TextEdit here. Without any document open I can go to File and see the basic core file commands. In a lmost all apps there are New, Open, Open Recent, Close, Save, Duplicate, Rename, and Move To.

So the first one here, of course, let's you create a new document. Now in a simple app like TextEdit just using File, New or the keyboard shortcut Command N, will instantly create a new document. In an app like Pages however using File, New will usually bring up a Template Chooser. So in this case there are some options you need to choose before you create a New Document. So there's a step in-between File, New and actually having the document open. In another app, and I'll use a third party app here called Acorn, you choose File, New and since this is a graphics app it needs to know how big the canvas should be. So it is going to ask you these questions before you create the new document. Now sometimes you can choose defaults. So for instance in Pages you can go to Preferences and under General you can choose for new documents Use a Template, change the template and pick one like Blank right here and now when I go to File, New it will skip that step and choose my default template. 

But another way to use an app is not to create a new document but open an existing one. So you go to File, Open and this will present you with the Open dialogue which allows you to navigate in a finder-like window here to find a document to open. So in this case, for instance, I can grab one like this and open it. There's a lot of functionality in these open dialogues. Now, of course, there are many alternatives to opening a file. You can go in the Finder and double click on a file to open it in the default app or you can Control Click or two-finger click or right click to use Open or Open With to select an app to open that file. You can also drag it to the Dock to the app that you want. There are so many ways to open files. Probably most people don't use File, Open to open files because it's easier to just double click on the file in the Finder.

But where it is useful if you're returning to the same location to open a file. So here I'll open this one and I want to open another one I can use File, Open or just Command O and you see I'm in the same location so it's easy to select another file. I don't even need to have a Finder window open anywhere to access these very easily. Another thing about File, Open is sometimes that's the default behavior for an app. So, for instance, I'm going to launch TextEdit here. It isn't even running. Since there is no document open in TextEdit at the moment it immediately jumps to the Open dialogue. I don't even have to choose File, Open. 

Next we have Open Recent which gives you a list of recent documents that you can get to because chances are the document you want to open now is probably one you were working on recently. So in most cases you can skip the whole open dialogue and go here to select one of these. You can set the number of items seen there by going into System Preferences and then to General and then look for Recent items. You can change it to be more or less. So when you already have a document open you can use some of the next items here. The next one being Close which will close the current document. In most apps now that also will Save. Save is implied. So you can make a change and then just immediately close. If an app doesn't automatically save it should prompt you to save if you made a change. 

Now, for course, if you have multiple documents open in an app, like I have two here in Pages, using File, Close will close the active window and the document in it. However, note that if you were to merge the windows so that you now have these documents in Tabs, then if you look here you can see two options. Close Window is going to close both of these tabs here. So instead the thing you probably want to do is use the Command W default there and it will now close the current tab leaving the other tab in the window and other windows still there. Now if you do have multiple windows open and you want to close them all at once you can do it with the Close command, hold the Option key down, and it changes to Close All. So Option Command W will close all of the current windows. 

You also have the Save command. But before I said if you close a window then it automatically saves. So what is the purpose of the Save command? Well one thing is, of course that if your compute crashes or something or you loose power then a Save will have everything on the drive and you won't have to worry about loosing any data. So it's good still to do a Command S or Save every once in awhile. The other thing is if you're using the Version Browser so you can browse previous versions of the document, those versions are going to depend on Saves. So if you start writing something and work on it for an hour and never save it, then save it at the end of a hour, you've got one version. But if you save every ten minutes you're going to have six different versions there. 

Now I should also point out when you create a new document it doesn't prompt you for a name. It just puts a place holder there. So, as you're working on it the first time you go to Save it, notice the Save command has three dots after it, meaning it is going to prompt you when you use this command. It won't just do the command and move on. That's because we have never named this document. So the first Save is actually where it prompts you to come up with a name. It's always good practice, when you create a new document, to save it pretty much right away so it's already there and you don't have to interrupt your work later on to come up with a name. 

Next we have Duplicate. So what Duplicate will do is create a second version of the file. So see how I have wombat.txt. Hit Duplicate and you will have two different documents. The original there and one now called Untitled. This is going to act like a new document. If I Save then it is going to prompt me to enter a name. It's going to suggest something and I save it as an entirely new file. So this is good if you kind of want to leave the document in this state behind and start a new document using this as the beginning of that document. Now the Duplicate function is similar to the old Save As function that hasn't been around for years in the main Mac apps. In fact you can still get to Save As. If you hold the Option key down Duplicate usually changes to Save As. So you've got a keyboard shortcut for that as well. Then you get the functionality just like the old Save As. Duplicate and Save As do similar things but they are a little bit different. A Save As is going to prompt you right away to where to save that file and then it is going to change this window to be looking at the new file leaving the old one behind. Whereas Duplicate leaves both windows there. 

Now next up we've got Rename. Now in the distant past you would never have wanted to rename a document while you were working on it. The normal thing to do would have been to Close the document and go to the Finder and Rename the file. But you don't need to worry about that now. You could Rename while you're working on the document even in the app you're using. So I can go to Rename here and now I can type the new name right here. I could even click here and rename it as well. So I don't have to use the menu to get to that. When I do either one of those, like that, it will instantly change the name here. Likewise, if I go to change in the Finder, something you would think would cause a problem, notice how the app updates instantly to show that. So you can Rename in either the Finder or in the app itself without any problems. 

Likewise you can use the next item, Move To and that allows you to move the file while it is open and inside the app to a different location. So you can choose from different default locations in Favorites or Other and actually use a Finder like window to choose a new location. So let's move this into a different folder like here and I'll move and you can see nothing really changes here. It's the same file name and all of that. But if I look here I can see the file is now gone from this location in the Finder. I'll go up a level, down into Business, and it's now located there. So of course you can use the Finder to move as well. I could easily take this file now. Move it into here and this doesn't skip a beat here in the app. If I command click here I could see it knows it's in the new location. No problem at all.

Now there are a lot of other things you're going to find here in the File Menu. A lot of times you have the ability to Export or Import here. You usually have a Share Menu with various ways to Share the document or the content in the document. Sometimes you've got the ability to show the property of the document and of course the ability to Print. But it all depends on the app. You could see in Pages you've got Export but in a slightly different location. You've got a Conversion feature. You've got some other advanced functionality. Password Settings. Some things to do with Templates and then Print here. With a third party app like Acorn you could see Export and Share, some file info, printing, and all of that. 

So this stuff at the bottom is going to change depending upon which app you're using. Apps typically put anything that has to do with the document as a whole in the File Menu and also functions that export, import, and share. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.