Where Did My Mac File Go?

If you save a new file or download something and now can't find it, this is the video for you. You'll learn how to save and download files to locations to make them easier to find, and also how to find files you already saved but now can't locate.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Can't remember where that saved or downloaded file is located. Let's see if we can find it.
If you've created a document and then saved it and then later on can't remember where it is or maybe you've downloaded something from a webpage and now you can't find it, this is a common problem that a lot of people have, both beginners and experienced users. 
First, let's talk about prevention. The way to avoid this problem is to note where you save your files. Make sure you put them in a good location. So, for instance, I'm here in Pages and I have just created a new document and typed my first line of text. Now let's say I want to save it now. I can go to File, Save or Command S. When I do this brings up the Saved Dialogue. This allows me to name the file and to decide where it is going to be saved. So let's name it something really simple here. Then look closely next to where, to see where it is going to be saved. In this case it is going to be saved to my last used location. The last time I saved a file which is my Documents folder. So I can click here and select another location. So I want to save it somewhere that makes sense and I also want to note that location so I remember that this file is saved to, say, my Documents folder. 
Now this is a compact version of the Saved Dialogue. If I click this little button here it expands into the full Version which is what you may see. So now I can decide using that same Pulldown Menu where the file is going to be saved. I can also select a location in the left Sidebar or I can navigate around in this area here in the main part of the Saved Dialogue. So, for instance, if I want to save it in this folder right here I can double click that folder to dive down into it. Now I can see where the file is going to be saved in this folder called Current Stuff. I want to make sure this is the right place for the file and also note its location. As a matter of fact if I click here notice how it gives me a path all the way up. I've got the Current Stuff folder which is in the Documents folder which is in iCloud Drive. So you can get the full picture of exactly where this file is going to be located. When I click Save it will Save it into that folder. 
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Now let's say I close this document and I want to find it again. One way to find it is to use the Finder which is how you manage your files. I'm going to go down to the Dock here and click on Finder which will open a new Finder Window if there isn't already one there. Now I want to go back to where I remember saving the file. Which would be in the Documents folder and I actually have it here in the left sidebar so I can easily access Documents. I can also use GO and then to Documents and it will take me to the same location. There's that folder Current Stuff that I remembered using to save that file. So I'm going to double click that to dive down in and then I see all files there and there, sure enough, is the file. I can now double click it to open it. 
Now another option I've got is to relaunch the App, in this case Pages, where I was before. Chances are it might give me an Open Dialogue which is kind of the opposite of the Save Dialogue. It allows you to open a file. It may show the actual location where I last saved something. If not, I can select this Pulldown Menu here, and find that folder and go to it, and there's my file. But I can also go to the File Menu and in most apps you're going to find Open Recent. Here it will list the last few files that you worked with. So chances are if this is something you just worked with earlier today, yesterday, or this week it is going to be in this list. You can select it here and it will open the file. 
If you use that because you didn't remember where you saved it you may want to go up to the Title here and then click on it. This will show you the name here and also its location. You can click here to see where you've saved it. So you can note that for next time. If it is not saved to a good location you can go to File and then Move To and now you get that same little Pulldown Menu here and you can change its location to something else. You go all the way to the bottom there's Other. Now you can select any location you want. So, for instance, I can go up from Current Stuff to Documents here. Maybe select another folder, like this business folder and then click Move to move it here. So that's where I'll find it next time. 
But you can also use the Finder to Search For a file. So I'm going to click on the Finder icon here in the Dock. It will open a New Finder Window or I can use File, New Finder Window to do that. Let's say it takes me somewhere and I don't see the file that I need. So I want to first start somewhere that makes sense. Perhaps my Documents folder. If I at least know that I probably saved it somewhere in my Documents folder I can start here. So now I want to click on the Search Icon which you'll find at the top right corner of the Finder window. Click on that and now I want to type something to search. I'm going to use a portion of the name. I may not remember the exact name but I remember this word was in it. Then I can select Name Contains. Now it is going to look in that location where I started. In this case the Documents folder and then look for the file, and in this case it has found it. If it hasn't found it I may want to expand the scope of the search to This Mac. It is going to search everywhere at all the drives connected to the Mac. So if it wasn't in my Documents folder it is likely to have found it now. There it is.
Note that if I can't remember the name of the file at all I can search for some contents. So I can click here and then search for some text, like that, and then select Content Contains. Then you can see here with This Mac selected it finds my file even though I didn't use the name of the file. Even if you don't remember the name or the contents of the file you could go to File, Find and then search by date. So I can use Last Modified Date or Created Date or Last Opened Date. Let's just use Last Modified Date. So the last time that a change was made to the file. I can select one of these, like This Week or Exactly This Day or After a certain day. I'm going to do Within the Last say 3 days. It is going to find everything that was modified in the last 3 days. I can click the Plus button here on the right and I can further refine the search by selecting Kind Is a Document. So it is not going to show me folders, and apps, and other things. I can check here to make sure it is searching the entire Mac, not just one folder. I can sort by like say Name, or what makes more sense here is Date Last Opened. I can see here, right at the top, it has found a document, the most recent opened document, and that looks like the one I want. I can double click to open it or use the Spacebar to bring up Quick Look to get a preview of the file without opening it and confirm that yes, this is the file that I want. I can close Quick Look and now double click here to open the file and now I can click here, see where it was saved, and use File, Move To, to put it in a better location so I can find it next time. 
Now how about instead of a file you created you downloaded a file from the Internet. For instance, here's a page with a download link. I'm going to click on that link and it is going to download the file. So now that that is done I'm going to figure out where the file is. The first place I want to look is in Safari and then Settings. Then go to General here at the top. Then look for File, Download Location. This is where files get downloaded to. So you can see in this case it saves to the Downloads folder. But I can change it to Other or Ask For Each Download, although that doesn't work for some kinds of downloads on the web. So you still want to make sure your default download location is set to something useful. The Downloads Folder is the typical default location. So if I return here to the Finder and then look in the left Sidebar I may see Downloads there. But even if I don't see it there I can use that GO Menu and then go to Downloads. This will take me to my Downloads Folder and there's the file. 
Now note when you go to download something and it's a regular download link like this you can Control Click on it, two-finger click on the trackpad, or right click on the mouse, and then select Download Link File As. Doing that brings up something that looks just like a Saved Dialogue and you can decide where this file goes and save it to the proper location right away instead of putting it in the Downloads Folder with maybe a whole bunch of other stuff. 
Note that when I did click this link I got a little animation that went from here to this button. This is another way to find your most recent downloads. You click here and it is going to show all your most recent downloads. Then you can click this little magnifying glass and it will open up a new Finder Window and take you right to the file. But if you downloaded a file, say, a few days ago you may not find it here. It may not be in this list at all. If you go to Safari and then Settings and then back to General there is Remove Download List Items right here. You can see in this case it is set to after one day. So it is perfectly normal for something you downloaded yesterday not to appear in that list. It doesn't mean the file is missing at all. It is just no longer in this handy little reference list in Safari. 
One thing that trips up a lot of people is using this Recents Folder here. If I select that and look I can see there is that Pages file I was working on. But where is that file I downloaded? It's not here. That's  because this shows you documents that you recently opened. You can see how it even sorts by Date Last Opened to show you your most recently opened files. The reason it hasn't showed me that download is that I've never opened the download. I just downloaded it and haven't even looked at it yet. 
Now if you still can't find your file using any of those methods, including Searching for it, then your next option is to Hunt for it. So manually look through your files. So a good place to start is to use the GO menu and go Home and then look at the folders you have here. You may see documents in the Desktop here or not. They may be on iCloud Drive. But you'll see other folders like Movies and Pictures and you can go into these. Just double click to go into them and see what's there. You can go into other folders here. You can go back with this back button or you use Command Up Arrow to go up and then you can dive down into other folders. Another way to go up is to Hold the Command Key and then select a level to go up to. If you searched through your Home folder and you can't find it, next is to try iCloud Drive. Here I've got my Document Folder in iCloud Drive so I can go down into that. Go down into different folders where I suspect the file maybe located and look for it. 
Another place to look is in iCloud Drive and then look at some of these other folders at the top level. For instance there is one for Pages. A lot of apps like to create folders here at this top iCloud Drive level and sometimes they use that as a default location for saving things. So if you're just searching in your Documents Folder you may miss a file that is actually in the Pages folder and you can look in here just to see if it is there. 
So if you haven't found your file now you may be out of luck. It's not where you thought you put it. You couldn't find it in the Recent Documents for that app. You couldn't find it with various different searches and just looking around at your different folders didn't turn it up. It could be simply that the file is named something different than you thought. So you want to go back and do these expanding your search and thinking about the contents of the file or what it could be called. But definitely next time you save a file remember to name it well and save it to a location where you'll know you'll find it. At the very least save it to the top level of the Documents folder until you find a better place. The same thing for downloads. Save it to the Downloads Folder if you can't think of a better place at that moment but then when it is convenient maybe move it into the Documents folder, into a subfolder that makes sense. 
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 10 Responses to “Where Did My Mac File Go?”

Judy Edwards

1 month ago

Thank you. Always enjoy and learn from your videos. This was a great video. Know I have a hundred duplicates because I can't find the original item. Will need to work on this issue for the next century.

Judy

Eugenia

I have lost saved items into the Clipboard but I can never find the Clipboard. Where is it?

Gary Rosenzweig

Eugenia: The "clipboard" is the buffer that holds something, like a piece of text, when you "copy" it, so you can "paste" it later. You can't lose files in the clipboard. What, exactly, are you doing, and what message or other thing happens to make you think you lost the file?

Sheldon

4 weeks ago

Thanks bunches....I lost a file the other day

Chris

Editing a file name in the title of a Pages document is a favorite feature and works well. However changing the storage location in the title does not work. What am I missing? macOS 15.3.2

Bruce M

Like many when I upgraded to Sequoia, indexing (Spotlight) failed. In Spotlight settings, I moved the entire drive into the privacy box, then out again. That didn't solve the problem. Next the terminal commands sudo mdutil -Eia off followed by sudo mdutil -Eia on. It made it better, but still didn't find all my files. The only thing that works is to pull ALL the files out of folders, recreate folders, then put the files back in. Per discussion boards, I'm not alone.

Chris: Not sure what you are doing exactly. What steps are you taking and what is the result?

nick

2 weeks ago

Gary, my question is specific to Finder, so hope it fits this forum. It's puzzling to me why the action "CUT" is not available in the context menu when organizing files in Finder. I usually open folder locations in new tabs and drag files that way, but I found that, especially when I have a large number of files selected, dragging onto the tab can be tricky. The command "COPY" is available but always wondered why "CUT" isn't? Do you know why that is? thx

nick: See https://macmost.com/how-to-copy-and-paste-files-in-the-mac-finder.html

Thanks Gary for that blast from the past :) You're right, now that you mention it, the MOVE option is much better than the CUT one.