OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Opening Documents

You can open documents in OS X in two basic ways: from the Finder and within an application.

Tip

To preview a document's contents before opening it, select it and press the spacebar to open the Quick Look preview window. You also can page through Quick Look previews in many documents directly from its Finder icon. Chapter 4 explains both Quick Look methods.

Opening documents from the Finder

To open a document from the Finder, several routes are available:

• (Apple) menu: Choose ⇒Recent Items, and choose an item from the Documents section of the menu.

• Dock: Drag a document onto a compatible application icon in the Dock. Or click a document icon residing inside a stacks folder in the Dock (see Chapter 2).

• Finder window: Double-click the document icon, press +O, choose File⇒Open, or right-click or Control+click the document and choose Open from the contextual menu. (To open the document in an application other than the default one assigned to this document type, choose Open With instead from either the File menu or the contextual menu and then choose the application to open the document in.) You also can drag a document onto a compatible application icon in the ...