The File Menu
The File menu (figure 17,18 , and 19 ) includes commands for working with files or documents. This section discusses the commands most often found under the File menu: New, Open, Close, and Save.
Figure 17,18 & 19. The File menu in TextEdit (top left), Address Book (bottom left), and Safari (above).



To create a new document or window
Choose File > New (Figure 7 ) or window (Figure 20 ) appears.
Figure 20. Safari's New Window command opens a new Web browser window displaying the default Home page.
[View full size image]

- As shown in Figures 17, 18 , and 19 , the exact wording of the command for creating a new document or window varies depending on the application and what the command does. This command, however, is usually the first one on the File menu.
To open a file
1. | Choose File > Open (Figure 17 ) or press ![]() Figure 21. TextEdit's Open dialog includes all of the elements found in a standard Open dialog.![]() |
2. | Use any combination of the following techniques to locate the document you want to open:
Figure 22. The From (and Where) pop-up menu enables you to backtrack from the currently displayed location to the folders in which it resides or a recently accessed folder.![]() ![]() |
3. | When the name of the file you want to open appears in the list on the right side of the window, use one of the following techniques to open it:
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- The exact wording of the Open command varies depending on the application and what you want to open. For example, the Open command on Safari's File menu(Figure 19 ) is Open File.The Open Recent command, which is available on the File menu of some applications (Figure 17 ), displays a submenu of recently opened items (Figure 23 ). Choose the item you want to open it again.
Figure 23. TextEdit's Open Recent submenu makes it easy to reopen a recently opened document.

Figure 24. When you select a file in the Open dialog, the file's icon or a preview and other information for the file appears. This example shows Preview's Open dialog with a JPEG format file selected. The image in the right side of the dialog is the file's custom icon, which was created automatically by Photoshop when the image was saved.

Figure 25. Mac OS X 10.4's new Spotlight feature works within the Open dialog, too.

To close a window
1. | Choose File > Close (Figure 16 appears.
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Figure 16 shows the dialog that appears in TextEdit.
To save a document for the first time
1. | Choose File > Save (Figure 17 ) or press ![]() Figure 26. The Save dialog sheet can be collapsed to offer fewer options…![]() Figure 27. …or expanded to offer more options.![]() |
2. | Use the Where pop-up menu (Figure 22 ) to select a location in which to save the document.or If necessary, click the triangle beside the Where pop-up menu (Figure 26 ) to expand the dialog (Figure 27 ). Then use any combination of the following techniques to select a location in which to save the document:
![]() Figure 28. Use the New Folder dialog to enter a name for a new folder.![]() |
3. | When the name of the folder in which you want to save the document appears on the Where pop-up menu, enter a name for the document in the Save As box and click Save.The document is saved in the location you specified. The name of the file appears in the document window's title bar (Figure 29 ).Figure 29. The name of the newly saved file appears in the window's title bar.![]() |
Chapter 6 .The Sidebar is covered in Chapter 2 , file paths are discussed in Chapter 3 , and iDisk is covered in Chapter 14 .
To save changes to a document
Choose File > Save (Figure 17 ), or press

- Mac OS X includes three ways to indicate whether a window contains unsaved changes:
- A bullet character appears in the close button on the title bar of the window for a document with unsaved changes (Figure 30 ).
Figure 30. A bullet in the close button of a document window indicates that the document has unsaved changes.

Figure 34 & 35. The Window menus for TextEdit (left) and iTunes (right).


To save a document with a new name or in a new location
1. | Choose File > Save As (Figures 17 and 19 ) to display the Save dialog sheet (Figure 26 or 27 ). |
2. | Follow steps 2 and 3 in the section titled "To save a document for the first time" to select a location, enter a name, and save the document. |
- Saving a document with a new name or in a new location creates a copy of the existing document. The open document is the copy, not the original. Any further changes you make and save for the open document are saved to the copy rather than the original.If you use the Save dialog to save a document with the same name as a document in the selected location, a confirmation dialog like the one in Figure 31 appears. You have two options:
- Click Cancel or press



Figure 31. This dialog appears when you try to save a file with the same name as another file in a folder. This is what the dialog looks like in TextEdit.
