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Cannot "Save As" in Preview (10.7)
- Thread starter theelysium
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If by a "brave new world," you mean a world where Apple sometimes screws up, then yes, I'd have to agree.
Can you say Final Cut Pro X? MobileMe?
And speaking of adapting, try listening to people who feel differently than you do, rather than just labeling them as being reluctant to change. After all, Apple listened to its discontent customers, and that's why MobileMe is in the trash bin and iCloud is on the horizon.
THAT'S adapting!
If you read what people have posted in this forum, you'll see that this isn't about failing to adapt; there are some valid reasons for having Save As even with Apple's direction in file systems.
Speaking only for myself, I'm used to the new gesturing and like it, and I actually really like Mission Control. I'm fine with most of the changes in Lion, but Save As is definitely a step in the wrong direction.
I own enough Apple products to open my own Apple store, and I cringe when I have to use a Windows machine, but that doesn't mean I think Steve Jobs walks on water, or that Apple's product designs are handed down to them on stone tablets.
I think Apple simply didn't realize how some people use Save As, so as the feedback reaches them, I hope they listen and bring back the feature in an update release.
Sure, I know it's not likely, but hey, a guy can hope, can't he?
"Duplicate" should be called "Triplicate"
The command "Duplicate" got the wrong name because most people will proceed as follows:
You want to write another letter to Steve Jobs, a guy you've been in touch with before. So the quickest hands-on approach (which millions of people use in this planet) is to open one of the letters you wrote to him earlier, let's say "Letter-To-Steve-Jobs-20110622.pages", click on "Duplicate" which creates "Letter-To-Steve-Jobs-20110622 copy.pages" in the same directory, edit your new text, click on "File" > "Save...", change the name to "Letter-To-Peter-Smith-20110726.pages".
The duplicated (and now redundant file) will either stay in your directory or has to be deleted manually.
This is a worst-case decline of usability and makes you loose time and disk space. It will make people stay with or switch back to Snow Leopard. Remember XP?
Please - everybody - send some www.apple.com/feedback
Jan Marks
Yellow Page Marketing B.V.
The command "Duplicate" got the wrong name because most people will proceed as follows:
You want to write another letter to Steve Jobs, a guy you've been in touch with before. So the quickest hands-on approach (which millions of people use in this planet) is to open one of the letters you wrote to him earlier, let's say "Letter-To-Steve-Jobs-20110622.pages", click on "Duplicate" which creates "Letter-To-Steve-Jobs-20110622 copy.pages" in the same directory, edit your new text, click on "File" > "Save...", change the name to "Letter-To-Peter-Smith-20110726.pages".
The duplicated (and now redundant file) will either stay in your directory or has to be deleted manually.
This is a worst-case decline of usability and makes you loose time and disk space. It will make people stay with or switch back to Snow Leopard. Remember XP?
Please - everybody - send some www.apple.com/feedback
Jan Marks
Yellow Page Marketing B.V.
Program just crashes on me
i can no longer use 'Preview' that's with Lion, I can open with no problem but if I go to crop it either just crashes and closes instantly or it puts big grey rectangles over the picture.
anyone else having crash issues with 'Preview'?
I'm not doing anything that I haven't done with the version on Snow Leopard.
i can no longer use 'Preview' that's with Lion, I can open with no problem but if I go to crop it either just crashes and closes instantly or it puts big grey rectangles over the picture.
anyone else having crash issues with 'Preview'?
I'm not doing anything that I haven't done with the version on Snow Leopard.
Then "most people" are doing it wrong
. If you are in pages and click on Duplicate, the duplicate file has no name. It's also not saved yet anywhere so isn't in the same directory. Edit it. Don't do a save, just close the document with Command-W. The system will prompt for a new file name and save the file. There is no triplicate.If the file was originally locked (likely if it is old) then just attempting to edit it will put up a dialog asking if you want to edit the original or make a duplicate. Hit enter to create a duplicate, and proceed as above.
Or you can use the Duplicate command in Finder which will create "Letter-To-Steve-Jobs-20110622 copy.pages". Rename the file and then open in Pages. Edit normally, closing (command-W) when done.
If you are doing this frequently you can create a Template in Pages or use the ancient "Stationery pad".
If you are creating many copies of the original, you can always drag the file icon in the title bar to a Finder window (or desktop) which effectively does a "Save-As", and then rename the file in Finder. When done, do a "revert to..." and then close the document. If you forget to do the "revert to" you can do it later because the version will be saved.
Sent feedback also.
I think Versions is great, but it really should be coupled with Save As. Save As was the ultimate all in one: save it how you want, where you want, and with the name that you want, and all you had to do was shift+command+S (though I will say that Windows does a much better job with shortcut continuity - alt+f+a means "save as" in pretty much every program I use, and that's with XP!).
EDIT: Just to further clarify my issue with Lion's set up, I just downloaded a PDF, which I saved to a location using "Export... ". I then want to save a textedit file to a location, which if I export it can only do so as a PDF. If I'm lucky and it hasn't previously been saved, I can just command+s "Save... ". If it already has been saved, I need to use "Duplicate", then "Save... ". I'm sorry, but how does anybody see that as an effective set up? It's 1) inconsistent and 2) inefficient.
If it wasn't for iCloud syncing calendars, I'd be going back to snow leopard in a heartbeat. I've been using Lion for close to a month now and I've yet to be that impressed by anything. It all feels slower, messier, and less intuitive. I hate to say it but I think I'm a lot more efficient with Windows XP at work.
I think Versions is great, but it really should be coupled with Save As. Save As was the ultimate all in one: save it how you want, where you want, and with the name that you want, and all you had to do was shift+command+S (though I will say that Windows does a much better job with shortcut continuity - alt+f+a means "save as" in pretty much every program I use, and that's with XP!).
EDIT: Just to further clarify my issue with Lion's set up, I just downloaded a PDF, which I saved to a location using "Export... ". I then want to save a textedit file to a location, which if I export it can only do so as a PDF. If I'm lucky and it hasn't previously been saved, I can just command+s "Save... ". If it already has been saved, I need to use "Duplicate", then "Save... ". I'm sorry, but how does anybody see that as an effective set up? It's 1) inconsistent and 2) inefficient.
If it wasn't for iCloud syncing calendars, I'd be going back to snow leopard in a heartbeat. I've been using Lion for close to a month now and I've yet to be that impressed by anything. It all feels slower, messier, and less intuitive. I hate to say it but I think I'm a lot more efficient with Windows XP at work.
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This is the main reason why I haven't upgraded to Lion, and I'm not gonna do it anytime soon either. The duplicate-function is just stupid. It's a whole lotta change for the sake of change, so Apple can say "See how new and innovative our newest OS is!". The problem is that Apple is making changes that are damaging the workflow, the very reason I chose OSX for in the first place!!
Some people are staunchly defending Apple here, ok..but this whole new saving-system is PURE BS for anyone who uses OSX for serious work where you need to have your files at specific places, and need to have a predefined system to your folder/file structure.
Some people are staunchly defending Apple here, ok..but this whole new saving-system is PURE BS for anyone who uses OSX for serious work where you need to have your files at specific places, and need to have a predefined system to your folder/file structure.
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Now I'm confused. Please clarify more! You downloaded a PDF with what program? Why did you save using "Export" when "Export" is used to save in alternate formats? What's a "textedit" file, and is it the same as the PDF file you downloaded?
I was viewing a PDF with Schubert's IT PDF plug-in, then pressed "Open with Preview". A "textedit" file being... the standard file format of the Apple program "TextEdit". Maybe .txt or .rtf. The PDF from Schubert's IT, and the TextEdit file were completely different, but with old OS X and with Windows, the exact same commands enabled you to save both documents where you want and how you want.
OK, I went and did the following:
- Opened a PDF in Safari on a remote site. Then I did an "Open in Preview"
- File shows as "locked". If I do a Command-S I get a prompt for where to save the file. If I do a Command-w the document goes away (for good). If I quit the Preview App and open it again, the pdf file reappears (because of autosave-resume), however it still hasn't been saved to a location I've instructed. Doing a Command-S at this point brings up the prompt asking me where to save the file.
- I open a textile with TextEdit.
- File shows as "locked". I can't save it because it is already saved. If I do a Command-W the document goes away. If I quit TextEdit and open it again the file reappears. And I'm in the same place as before. This seems sensible to me.
- If I duplicate the file, the duplicate is a new file, like the PDF file, and the duplicate behaves exactly like the PDF file.
I think what is important here is to understand that "new files", those that have never been explicitly saved on your system, are handled different from existing files. However new files are consistently handled across apps and existing files are handled consistently across apps.
"Save As" is FAR more functional than Duplicate and Save-again
ok "TLD", "Mr. Applegate" et al. the condescending tone is not appreciated and is what annoys the rest of the world with the Mac Fapping apologists.
"Save As" is FAR more efficient than the current Mac Lion workflow and it would not have been hard to leave in. Additionally, it needs to be implemented better in other ways...
My Most Common scenario (among quite a few others):
you are researching online.
you find a .pdf that may (or may not) have useful information.
you click on it and Preview opens the file (saved in Downloads folder)
you read the .pdf and decide that the information IS pertinent.
you want to hit 'save as' in order to rename the file and place it in a folder that makes sense to you (i.e. 'Bosnia' is more useful to me than 'Downloads')
I cannot do this.
I now need to:
1. 'Duplicate' the file
2. wait for the new (redundant) window to arrive
3. Click Save and then navigate from the top level down through as many layers as required to get where I want to Save (HD_Projects_gendered conflict_balkans_post conflict_Bosnia_Rape Trauma Treatment)
4. SAVE the document with a new name
5. go to the previous window and close it without saving
6. Open a Finder window
7. Navigate to the Downloads Folder and DELETE the original file
8... every file I save with Duplicate+Save makes me start at the top of the file tree and drill down to where I want to be. Yuk.
Workarounds:
1'. Open a Finder window for Downloads and another for the Destination Folder leaving them open on my desktop '(and another for each additional possible Destination folder)
2. View the .pdf in Preview and close it without saving
3. Drag and Drop from the [Finder-Downloads] to [Finder-Bosnia]
***************************************
MY Preferred User Experience (keyboard only):
1. I select a .pdf in my browser and Preview opens it.
2. I view the .pdf, and possibly make annotations to it.
3. I use [Cmd-Shft-S] to 'Save As' and hit [enter] to save.
(because it remembers the last place I saved TO)
The original is now edited, and through a 'file-move' operation is now in the right location for my needs, there is nothing left in the Downloads folder.
********************************************
I understand that the latter is not how 'Save As' works in many applications/OS's but it is how I would prefer to operate.
Right now, I expend about two minutes PER DOCUMENT just saving it. @ 
ALTERNATE WORKING FLOW:
I know about 'Export...' which does much of the same thing as 'Save As' but takes you to the folder where the document was opened FROM (which can be useful when saving multiple named versions of the same document) it also does not do a 'File-Move' so that you can avoid leaving a trail of old useless versions here and there.
Using Export saves a little time because I can rename the file and go back later to the Downloads folder and select 'every other file' that has been renamed then drag them to new destinations, but sometimes I have to reopen the .pdf to remind myself of the contents in order to classify them properly.
[note: What? You say "Just put the subject in the filename for easier classification" - sounds good, but then I need to go through all of them individually and keep the filename but lose the 'classification' portion manually. Ugh! ]
ok "TLD", "Mr. Applegate" et al. the condescending tone is not appreciated and is what annoys the rest of the world with the Mac Fapping apologists.
"Save As" is FAR more efficient than the current Mac Lion workflow and it would not have been hard to leave in. Additionally, it needs to be implemented better in other ways...
My Most Common scenario (among quite a few others):
you are researching online.
you find a .pdf that may (or may not) have useful information.
you click on it and Preview opens the file (saved in Downloads folder)
you read the .pdf and decide that the information IS pertinent.
you want to hit 'save as' in order to rename the file and place it in a folder that makes sense to you (i.e. 'Bosnia' is more useful to me than 'Downloads')
I cannot do this.
I now need to:
1. 'Duplicate' the file
2. wait for the new (redundant) window to arrive
3. Click Save and then navigate from the top level down through as many layers as required to get where I want to Save (HD_Projects_gendered conflict_balkans_post conflict_Bosnia_Rape Trauma Treatment)
4. SAVE the document with a new name
5. go to the previous window and close it without saving
6. Open a Finder window
7. Navigate to the Downloads Folder and DELETE the original file
8... every file I save with Duplicate+Save makes me start at the top of the file tree and drill down to where I want to be. Yuk.
Workarounds:
1'. Open a Finder window for Downloads and another for the Destination Folder leaving them open on my desktop '(and another for each additional possible Destination folder)
2. View the .pdf in Preview and close it without saving
3. Drag and Drop from the [Finder-Downloads] to [Finder-Bosnia]
***************************************
MY Preferred User Experience (keyboard only):
1. I select a .pdf in my browser and Preview opens it.
2. I view the .pdf, and possibly make annotations to it.
3. I use [Cmd-Shft-S] to 'Save As' and hit [enter] to save.
(because it remembers the last place I saved TO)
The original is now edited, and through a 'file-move' operation is now in the right location for my needs, there is nothing left in the Downloads folder.
********************************************
I understand that the latter is not how 'Save As' works in many applications/OS's but it is how I would prefer to operate.
Right now, I expend about two minutes PER DOCUMENT just saving it.
@ ALTERNATE WORKING FLOW:
I know about 'Export...' which does much of the same thing as 'Save As' but takes you to the folder where the document was opened FROM (which can be useful when saving multiple named versions of the same document) it also does not do a 'File-Move' so that you can avoid leaving a trail of old useless versions here and there.
Using Export saves a little time because I can rename the file and go back later to the Downloads folder and select 'every other file' that has been renamed then drag them to new destinations, but sometimes I have to reopen the .pdf to remind myself of the contents in order to classify them properly.
[note: What? You say "Just put the subject in the filename for easier classification" - sounds good, but then I need to go through all of them individually and keep the filename but lose the 'classification' portion manually. Ugh! ]
Actually, yes you can. If you use Safari to look at the PDF, you can just click on the "Open PDF in Preview" button. Once the file is open in Preview, "File->Save..." will perform the "save as" operation you're looking for.
Or, once it is in Preview, you can command+drag the icon in the title bar to the destination in Finder. Hit the Enter key and change the name. Don't need a Duplicate or Save As...
Note that if you don't use Safari, the PDF file does end up in the Download folder, and the download folder does need to be cleaned out occasionally. Safari is much better integrated with OS X.
"Save as" does keep a list of most recently reference folder which is very handy. And column view is very useful if you have to move among multiple destinations, as are "spring loaded" folders.
Yes, once you do that initial "Save" you have to right-click on the document window's title to see exactly where it was saved to*. There's no finding that information through the putative 'File' menu anymore.
*lessen of course you ALWAYS check assiduously as to where Apple wants your file to go in the Save dialog before clicking OK.
Or, you could use Spotlight, which works when you haven't saved things to hidden folders. Of course, Spotlight likes to overwhelm with document CONTENTS, rather than just file names.
Once you save and close a document, there's no good way to find it, unless you already know where it is.
I liked it better when the File menu allowed me to find the location of the files I was working on. (Oh, yes 'recent documents', but what if the doc is NOT recent?)
Also, right-click on the PDF in Safari & "Save PDF as..." appears.
----------
I don't understand all the fuss. "Export" a PDF in Preview saves a copy in the same # of steps as "Save as" + you can also export to another format.
Mac32 said:
Then reading.........
ok "TLD", "Mr. Applegate" et al. the condescending tone is not appreciated and is what annoys the rest of the world with the Mac Fapping apologists.
"Save As" is FAR more efficient than the current Mac Lion workflow and it would not have been hard to leave in. Additionally, it needs to be implemented better in other ways...
My Most Common scenario (among quite a few others):
you are researching online.
you find a .pdf that may (or may not) have useful information.
you click on it and Preview opens the file (saved in Downloads folder)
you read the .pdf and decide that the information IS pertinent.
you want to hit 'save as' in order to rename the file and place it in a folder that makes sense to you (i.e. 'Bosnia' is more useful to me than 'Downloads')
I cannot do this.
I now need to:
1. 'Duplicate' the file
2. wait for the new (redundant) window to arrive
3. Click Save and then navigate from the top level down through as many layers as required to get where I want to Save (HD_Projects_gendered conflict_balkans_post conflict_Bosnia_Rape Trauma Treatment)
4. SAVE the document with a new name
5. go to the previous window and close it without saving
6. Open a Finder window
7. Navigate to the Downloads Folder and DELETE the original file
8... every file I save with Duplicate+Save makes me start at the top of the file tree and drill down to where I want to be. Yuk.
Workarounds:
1'. Open a Finder window for Downloads and another for the Destination Folder leaving them open on my desktop '(and another for each additional possible Destination folder)
2. View the .pdf in Preview and close it without saving
3. Drag and Drop from the [Finder-Downloads] to [Finder-Bosnia]
***************************************
MY Preferred User Experience (keyboard only):
1. I select a .pdf in my browser and Preview opens it.
2. I view the .pdf, and possibly make annotations to it.
3. I use [Cmd-Shft-S] to 'Save As' and hit [enter] to save.
(because it remembers the last place I saved TO)
The original is now edited, and through a 'file-move' operation is now in the right location for my needs, there is nothing left in the Downloads folder.
********************************************
I understand that the latter is not how 'Save As' works in many applications/OS's but it is how I would prefer to operate.
Right now, I expend about two minutes PER DOCUMENT just saving it.
ALTERNATE WORKING FLOW:
I know about 'Export...' which does much of the same thing as 'Save As' but takes you to the folder where the document was opened FROM (which can be useful when saving multiple named versions of the same document) it also does not do a 'File-Move' so that you can avoid leaving a trail of old useless versions here and there.
Using Export saves a little time because I can rename the file and go back later to the Downloads folder and select 'every other file' that has been renamed then drag them to new destinations, but sometimes I have to reopen the .pdf to remind myself of the contents in order to classify them properly.
[note: What? You say "Just put the subject in the filename for easier classification" - sounds good, but then I need to go through all of them individually and keep the filename but lose the 'classification' portion manually. Ugh! ]
I've not (and don't intend on upgrading) to Lion until workarounds (i.e. hacks or mods) are introduced to fix these issues. I am one of the wildly pissed off people about the Spaces & Expose issue. I was aware of the chances in the document structures (via Apple marketing) but had no real examples of how it would impact work flow..........til now.
My response to the save as issue, DEAR GOD!
I cannot begin to describe how that would tank the way I work on projects. There's a difference between safety backup and a version control scheme that simply doesn't work across the board, and in some cases may not make any sense at all.
If you are merging into one of the PDFs, first "Duplicate" that PDF (Shift-Cmd-S). Now merge into the duplicate. When you close the duplicate you will be prompted for the name. (Note- you use Cmd-W or the red button to close the document, not Cmd-Q which quits the application and autosaves the document, deferring the naming until you open the application later.)
I'd also suggest upgrading to Mountain Lion which gives you the Save and Save as commands, although you still don't need them.
It's been a while now since I've used Lion. But it seems to me that clicking the title will rename the file while the goal is to save the changed file but leave the original alone. This issue went away with Mountain Lion and Mavericks which have restored the ability to "save as".