Great tip! How long has this feature been around?
Edit: According to Google this feature has been around since OSX 10.0!
Edit: According to Google this feature has been around since OSX 10.0!
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Make Any File a Template Using This Hidden macOS Tool
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The feature was carried over from the classic Mac OS days!
In Italian they choose to name this function Usa come modello, which could be translated in English as Use as model or Use as sample or something like that. Surely more straightforward that Stationery pad.
Thank you for this. I’m already thinking of several ways to implement this in my workflow. Incredibly useful and I will definitely come back to a MacRumors more often if there are more articles like this, I feel like there’s so many hidden features. Many of us don’t know about especially me since I’ve only been on Mac for four years.
This is one of those features that I think "OK, that's good to know" but in a few weeks/months when I actually have a use for it, there's no way I'll remember what it's called or where it's hidden.
Stationery is what you write letters on. I assume a stationery pad is a stack of these identical sheets of paper. (That makes sense in terms of this template feature.) However, I’ve never heard anyone call it “stationery pad.”In French, it's called "Modèle" which means "Model". Much more clear
Maybe I'm just stupid but I have no idea what a Stationery Pad is.
Somewhat related to this: I've been using New File Menu (app store link) for a while now and find it quite useful for quickly creating a file "in place" directly in the folder I'm currently looking at. I believe Windows has a similar native feature. Once you set it up and give it permission, it lives in your menu bar and gives you a simple drop down allowing you to create a new file of whichever type(s) you've set in its preferences:
Out of the box, you can use it to create generic files of quite a few types (see below) but you can also import custom templates of your own creation. I'm not a power user by any stretch, but I do really appreciate the power and flexibility here.
Out of the box, you can use it to create generic files of quite a few types (see below) but you can also import custom templates of your own creation. I'm not a power user by any stretch, but I do really appreciate the power and flexibility here.
Yeah, it's an old feature, I believe from Rapsody.
And MacWorld wrote about it 14 years ago:
The workings of Stationery Pad
Ever wondered what that Stationery Pad option in Finder's Get Info window was for? Now you know.
www.macworld.com
That's exactly what a stationery pad is. The naming of this feature dates back to when Apple was all about skeuomorphism and the "paperless office."
they took "save as" off the textedit/preview/others file menu for this? And didn't tell us? Many years wasted accidentally editing a file, having to revert, go back make a copy and redo edits on it. Or sometimes forgetting wiping out the original version. Wish they'd just leave stuff alone sometimes and not invent weird UX contortions to force you through.
You've got that backwards. The feature detailed here predates the change in File > Save... behavior by decades.
Also, if you use the key shortcut for Save As (⌘⇧S) it immediately invokes the File > Duplicate command to open an untitled, unsaved version of the same file. This is almost exactly the same behavior as Save As -- only difference I can see is that Duplicate leaves open the file you originally opened.
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Save As became Duplicate when macOS introduced versioning.
I’ve looked at thousands of Get Info dialogs and can’t recall ever seeing it. I have used Locked, so I must have seen it, but apparently I was never curious enough to research what it did.It's funny, when I saw the headline I thought this "tool" would be some arcane Terminal command and I wondered "how will this be different from ticking Stationery Pad?"
I think I first noticed it in System 7
Edit: After a little bit of playing around in an emulator, it looks like the feature was added in 7.
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Same here! I probably have info dialogs open on a daily basis, how have I never seen this check box????? witchcraft!
I learned about neat little Mac OS features like this from reading The Missing Manuals series of books
You can also hold the Option key in the File menu to bring back Save As (replaces Duplicate), or use Cmd-Opt-Shift-S.