OS X Mountain Lion For Dummies

Organizing Your Stuff in Folders

I won’t pretend to be able to organize your Mac for you. Organizing your files is as personal as your taste in music; you develop your own style with the Mac. But after you know how to open and save documents when you’re using applications, these sections provide food for thought — some ideas about how I organize things — and some suggestions that can make organization easier for you, regardless of how you choose to do it yourself.

The upcoming sections look at the difference between a file and a folder; show you how to set up nested folders; and cover how some special folder features work. After you have a good handle on these things, you’ll almost certainly be a savvier — and better organized — OS X user.

Files versus folders

When I speak of a file, I’m talking about what’s connected to any icon except a folder or disk icon. A file can be a document, an application, an alias of a file or an application, a dictionary, a font, or any other icon that isn’t a folder or disk. The main distinction is that you can’t put something in most file icons.

The exceptions are icons that represent OS X packages. A package is an icon that acts like a file but isn’t. Examples of icons that are really packages include many software installers and applications, as well as “documents” saved by some programs (such as Keynote, GarageBand, or TextEdit files saved in its ...