Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

The Save and Open Dialog Boxes

When you choose File→Save, you’re asked where you want the new document stored on your hard drive, what you want to call it, and what Finder tags (Broken Aliases) you want applied to it. The resulting dialog box is a miniature Finder. All the skills you’ve picked up working at the desktop come into play here.

To give it a try, launch any program that has a Save or Export command—TextEdit, for example. Type a couple of words, and then choose File→Save. The Save sheet appears (Figure 4-25).

Tip

In most programs, a quick glance at the Close button in the upper-left corner of a window tells you whether it’s been saved. When a small dot appears in the red button, it means you’ve made changes to the document that you haven’t saved yet. (Time to press ⌘-S!) The dot disappears as soon as you save your work.

In programs that offer the Auto Save and Versions features described later in this chapter, like TextEdit, the red-dot convention has been retired. Instead, when you’ve made changes to a document since saving it, you see the light-gray word Edited in the title bar.

Sheets

When you save in most Mac programs, a little Save dialog box called a sheet slides directly out of the document’s title bar. This little Save box is a sticky note attached to the document . It stays there, neatly attached and waiting, even if you switch to another program, another document, the desktop, or wherever. When you finally return to the document, the Save sheet is still there, waiting ...