Default save-as location

Discussion in 'macOS' started by KeithJaw, Nov 15, 2010.

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  1. KeithJaw, Nov 15, 2010

    KeithJaw macrumors newbie

    Joined:
    Sep 3, 2010
    #1
    I'm used to working on a PC. When I open a file on a PC and then do a 'save-as', the PC always saves the new file in the same folder as the original. This seems so obvious, and 99% of the time is exactly what you want. On the other odd occasions it's simple to change the path.

    But it doesn't happen on a Mac. MAC saves the file to wherever you last did a 'save-as'. Quite often I forget to check where this is and change it. I then have to do a 'Search' in 'Finder' to look for it. This gives me another problem, because 'Search' goes off hunting before you've even finished typing the name of the file - and either seems to find hundreds of unrelated items, or zilch! The 'help' on search doesn't help. The last time this happened to me, I could only find the file by searching manually in each of the places I thought it might be - and never managed to find it using the 'Search' facility.

    I used to find 'Default Folder X' a help in regard to fixing the 'save-as' location, but the current version working in conjunction Snow Leopard, doesn't seem to be so effective.

    Am I the only one who suffers from this problem?
     
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  2. Kyffin, Nov 15, 2010
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2010

    Kyffin macrumors 6502

    Joined:
    Sep 5, 2010
    #2
    Dunno how much it helps but thats why I learnt to use 'save' for saving the data and 'save as' if I want to make changes, but yeah it takes getting used to (I thought of it as the OS trying to be over-eager helpful, but it can be a pain esp. when you are dealing with identically named sub-folders). Not sure if there's a way to customise this though, am curious?

    As for searching 'Spotlight' I find the trick is to keep typing- it'll just narrow down until you get what you want. This is definitely something I appreciated when I moved to mac- not only how fast it is (tried the equivalent on Windows recently and it genuinely wasn't useful), but also how good- I had the same problems when saving similarly titled docs. all over the place (re: saving in the wrong places as above), fortunately I was able to find them by remembering some word groups/ sentence fragments in the document and voila! Really appreciate this feature now, either cmd.+space or the magnifying glass in the top bar (right) and you've all your files, apps, a calculator and dictionary right at your fingertips.

    Hope this helps some
     
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  3. KeithJaw, Nov 16, 2010

    KeithJaw thread starter macrumors newbie

    Joined:
    Sep 3, 2010
    #3
    Thanks for your response, Kyffin. I haven't really experimented with 'Spotlight' so I'd better give it a go.

    I feel that Default Folder X ought to be the answer, maybe I need to look at the setup preferences.

    But it does seem strange to me, when folk praise the 'virtues' of a MAC being easier to use than a PC, because in this respect at least it seems anything but!
     
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