Macs All-in-One For Dummies, 4th Edition (2014)

Book I. Getting Started with Mac Basics

Chapter 4. Working with Files and Folders

In This Chapter

Using the Finder

Organizing and viewing folders

Tagging files and folders

Searching with Spotlight

Setting up Smart Folders

Deleting files and folders

When you need to organize stuff scattered around the house, one strategy would be to toss everything in the middle of the floor. However, it’s probably easier to take a more organized approach by storing off-season clothes in one box, retired gadgets in another box (to be taken to the local recycling center), bills in one file folder, and new books you want to read — or your e-book reader — on your nightstand.

Computers work in a similar way. Although you could dump everything on the top level of your hard drive, it’s more helpful to divide your hard drive in a way that can help you sort and arrange your stuff in an orderly, easy-to-get-to fashion. Instead of boxes or shelves, the Mac usesfolders (which tech-types like Joe also refer to as directories). In a nutshell, a folder lets you store and organize related files.

This chapter is dense with information, but familiarizing yourself with the way your Mac organizes documents, applications, and files will make everything you do on your Mac a lot easier. We tell you several ways to do the same thing so you can choose the way that’s easiest for you to do and remember. We begin by explaining the Finder, which is the tool you use to organize your files and folders. Next, we show you how to create and manage folders. We also tell you about tags, a feature added in OS X Mavericks, which helps you quickly identify and find folders and files. At the end of the chapter, we shine a light on your Mac’s search tool, Spotlight Search. At the end of the chapter, we spell out the procedure for deleting files and folders.

Getting to Know the Finder

The Finder manages drives, devices, files, and folders on your Mac. To access the Finder, click the Finder icon (the smiley face icon on the far left or top) on the Dock. The Finder is divided into three parts, as shown in Figure 4-1:

· A toolbar that runs across the top of the window and contains buttons that you use to control and manage the files and folders in the Finder.

· A left pane showing the Sidebar, which is where you find a list of connected storage devices as well as commonly used folders.

· A right pane showing the contents of the selected drive or folder (or search results if one was performed). If you switch to List, Column, or Cover Flow view, which we explain in the section “Organizing and Viewing a Folder,” the right pane also shows a hierarchy of files — and even other folders — stored inside folders.

The right pane may be further divided into tabs, which are essentially panes within the pane that display different folders open simultaneously, although only the one in view on top is active.

Figure 4-1: The Finder displays the files, folders, and devices connected to your Mac.

You can choose to hide or show both the toolbar and Sidebar, or hide just the Sidebar from the Finder View menu. You can’t hide the toolbar alone, nor do you have that option if you have active tabs.

Handling devices

The Devices category of the Sidebar lists your Mac (Barbara’s Mac in Figure 4-1) and any devices, remote or cabled, connected to your Mac as well as any mounted disk images, which can appear when you download software updates or large files.

When you click your Mac in the Device category of the Sidebar, you see the internal hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD), which is named Macintosh HD by default. This is the drive that your Mac boots from. If your desktop Mac has a second hard drive installed, it appears in the Devices list.

The other devices listed here are those that you plug into your Mac, such as an external hard drive, a USB flash drive, or a digital camera. One external drive, Backup Disk, is connected in Figure 4-1. These removable devices can be connected and disconnected at any time.

To connect a removable device to your Mac, just plug it in with the appropriate FireWire, Thunderbolt, or USB cable. The icon for the device appears in the Devices list and on the Desktop.

You can eject a removable drive when you no longer need to access it or want to take it with you. Ejecting a removable hard drive or USB flash drive removes its icon from the Finder and Desktop and allows you to then safely disconnect it from your Mac.

If you physically try to disconnect a removable drive before you eject it, your Mac might mess up the data on that drive. Always eject removable drives before physically disconnecting them.

To remove a removable device from a Mac, do one of the following:

· Click the Finder icon on the Dock to open the Finder window, and then click the Eject button next to the connected drive you want to remove in the Finder window Sidebar.

· Click the device icon on the Desktop and choose File⇒Eject.

· Click the device icon and press +E.

· Control-click the device icon and choose Eject from the shortcut menu that appears.

· Drag the device icon to Trash on the Dock (it turns into an Eject button); then let go of the mouse.

If the removable device is a CD/DVD, your Mac ejects it. If the removable device is plugged into a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port or a FireWire port on your Mac, you can then physically disconnect the device.

Understanding folders

All the data you create and save by using an application (such as a word-processing document or a photograph you copy from your digital camera to your Mac’s hard drive) is stored as a file. Although you can store files on any storage device, the more files you store on a device, the harder it is to find the one file you want at any given time. Much like you would place related paper documents in a manila folder rather than stack them willy-nilly on your desk, folders on your Mac help you organize and manage electronic files on a storage device in a logical way. You can even store folders inside other folders.

Initially, every Mac hard drive contains the following folders:

· Applications: Contains all the apps installed on your Mac. When you open Launchpad, you also see all the apps that are stored in the Applications folder.

· Library: Contains data and settings files used by applications installed on your Mac, fonts, and plug-ins used by applications such as Internet web browsers.

· System: Contains files used by the OS X operating system. You shouldn’t change this folder.

Never delete, rename, or move any files or folders stored in the Library or System folders, or else you might cause your Mac (or at least some apps on your Mac) to stop working. Files in the Library and System folders are used by your Mac to make your computer work. If you delete or rename files in either folder, your Mac might not operate the way it’s supposed to — or (worse) grind to a halt.

· Users: Contains any files that you — and anyone else who uses your Mac — create and save, including documents, pictures, music, and movies.

Home folders are kept in the Users folder; each account on your Mac is assigned a Home folder when the account is set up. (See Book III, Chapter 2 for more information about creating accounts.) The Home folder has the same name as the account and shouldn’t be renamed. The Home folder of the user who is logged in looks like a little house.

Each Home folder automatically contains the following folders when an account is set up. Notice that these folders have icons on them.

· Desktop: Contains any application and document icons that appear on your Mac’s Desktop.

· Documents: Contains any files you create and save by using different applications. (You’ll probably want to organize this folder by creating multiple folders inside it to keep all your files organized in a logical, easy-to-manage way.)

· Downloads: Contains any files you download from the Internet. After being downloaded, you’ll want to move them to an appropriate folder or, if you download apps, install them.

· Library: Contains folders and files used by any applications installed on your Mac. (Note: There are three Library folders: one stored on the top level of your hard drive, another inside that Library folder, and one hidden inside your Home folder, which you can see by holding the Option key and choosing Go⇒Library.)

· Movies: Contains video files created by iMovie and certain other applications for playing or editing video, such as Final Cut Pro X or QuickTime Player.

· Music: Contains audio files, such as music tracks stored in iTunes; or created by GarageBand or another audio application; such as Audacity.

· Pictures: Contains digital photographs, such as those you import into iPhoto.

· Public: Provides a folder that you can use to share files with other user accounts on the same Mac, or with other users on a local area network (LAN).

· Sites: Provides a folder for storing any web pages you use on a website you manage.

Every drive (such as your hard drive) can contain multiple folders, and each folder can contain multiple folders. A collection of folders stored inside folders stored inside other folders is a hierarchy. It’s important to know how to view and navigate through a folder hierarchy to find specific files, and we tell you how to do that in the “Navigating the Finder” section later in this chapter.

Setting Finder preferences

As you look at the figures in this book, you might say to yourself, “My Finder doesn’t look like that.” You probably have different Finder preferences than we do. You can choose the items you see in the Finder Sidebar and also how the Finder behaves in certain situations by setting the Finder preferences to your liking. Follow these steps, and remember you can always go back and change them later if you think of a better setup:

1. Click the Finder icon on the Dock.

A Finder window opens.

2. Choose Finder⇒Preferences.

The Finder Preferences window opens.

3. Click the General button at the top, if it isn’t selected.

4. Select the check boxes next to the items you want to see on your Desktop.

You can select any or all of the following: Hard Disks, External Disks, CDs, DVDs, and iPods, and/or Connected Servers.

5. From the New Finder Windows Show pop-up menu, choose which window you want to open when you open the finder.

6. (Optional) Select the Open Folders in Tabs Instead of New Windows check box if you want this option in the Action menu, which you find in the Finder Toolbar.

You can have more than one folder open simultaneously. They can be opened in separate windows, which tend to clutter the Desktop, or in separate tabs within one Finder window. See the section “Working with tabs” to learn about tabs.

7. Click the Sidebar button.

The Sidebar preferences pane opens, as shown in Figure 4-2.

8. Select the check boxes next to the items you want to see in the Finder Sidebar.

When the Finder is open, you can show and hide the items in each category by clicking the Show/Hide button that appears when you hover to the right of the category title in the Sidebar.

Figure 4-2: Choose the items you want to see listed in the Finder Sidebar.

9. Click the Advanced button to choose to activate one or more of the following options:

· Show All Filename Extensions displays the file extension on every filename on your Mac. File extensions are the two or more letters after a file name, such as .doc or .xls.

· Show Warning before Changing an Extension opens a dialog if you save a file as a different type, such as saving a .doc file as .txt.

· Show Warning before Emptying the Trash gives you time for second thoughts before you throw a document away.

· Empty Trash Securely overwrites files when you empty the trash so a savvy hacker can’t rebuild your documents. This is sort of like shredding your credit card bills before recycling the paper they’re printed on.

You can also set the search level for Spotlight search, which we discuss in the “Spotlight Preferences” section, later in this chapter.

10. Click the red Close button in the upper-left corner to close the window.

Navigating the Finder

To access files stored on your Mac, navigate the different folders and devices by using the Finder. First choose a connected drive or device, and then you can open and exit folders or jump between specific folders. We explain each method throughout these sections.

To open the Finder, click the Finder icon on the Dock or click the background of your Desktop and choose File⇒New Finder Window. The Finder opens to the folder or device you specified in Finder preferences. The Finder opens when you double-click a folder, too, but it opens at the level of that specific folder, not at the highest point of the Finder hierarchy. See the section “Working with tabs” to learn about opening more than one Finder window or tab at a time.

Opening a folder

When you open the Finder and click a device, the Finder displays all the files and folders stored on that device. To open a folder (and move down the folder hierarchy), you have several choices:

· Double-click the folder.

· Click the folder and choose File⇒Open.

· Click the folder and press +O.

· Click the folder and press +↓.

· Click the folder, and then click the Action button on the toolbar and choose Open in New Tab or Open in New Window (depending on whether you select the Open Folders in Tabs Instead of New Windows option from Finder⇒Preferences⇒General) or Open at the very bottom of the menu to open the folder in the existing tab or window.

· Control-click the folder and choose Open or Open in New Tab/Window from the shortcut menu that appears.

Each time you open a folder within a folder, you’re essentially moving down the hierarchy of folders stored on that device.

Working with tabs

Tabs are a way of having several folders open in one pane at the same time so you don’t have to close and open folders to switch between them or use the Back and Forward buttons. To open a folder in a new tab, click the folder, click the Action button, and choose Open in New Tab, as shown in Figure 4-3.

Hold down the Option key while clicking the Action button, and Open in New Tab becomes Open in New Window.

If you want to open a new tab as if it were a new Finder window, click the Add Tab button (the plus sign) on the far right end of the tabs. The Finder opens to the device or folder you specified from Finder⇒Preferences⇒General. You only see the Add Tab button when two or more tabs are open; if you don’t see it, choose File⇒New Tab or Open in New Tab from the Action menu.

Figure 4-3: Tabs help you navigate through folders on the Finder.

To close a tab, hover over the left end until you see the “x” and then click it.

When you hide, close, or minimize the Finder window and reopen it from the Dock, your tabs are still in place. If, instead, you click the Desktop and choose File⇒New Finder Window, you won’t see your tabs, but you can still access them by clicking the Finder icon on the Dock.

Jumping to a specific folder

By moving up and down the folder hierarchy on a device, you can view the contents of every file stored on a device. However, you can also jump to a specific folder right away by choosing one of these options:

· Click the tab you opened for that folder.

· Choose a folder from the Go menu — for example, choose Go⇒Utilities — or press +Shift+U to open the Utilities folder. Other folders listed on the Go menu can also be accessed by pressing the appropriate shortcut keys, which appear next to the folder name on the menu.

· Click a folder displayed in the Sidebar.

· Use the Go⇒Recent Folders command to jump to a recently opened folder. (Using this command sequence displays a submenu of the last ten folders you visited.)

If you display the contents of a folder in List, Column, or Cover Flow views, you can view folder hierarchies directly in the Finder. (You find out more about using the List, Column, and Cover Flow views later in the “Organizing and Viewing Folders” section.)

Jumping back and forth

While you navigate from one folder to the next, you might suddenly want to return to a folder for a second look. To view a previously viewed folder, you can choose the Back command in one of three ways:

· Click the Back arrow.

· Choose Go⇒Back.

· Press +[.

After you use the Back command at least once, you can choose the Forward command, which reverses each Back command you chose. To choose the Forward command, pick one of the following ways:

· Click the Forward arrow.

· Choose Go⇒Forward.

· Press +].

Moving to a higher folder

After you open a folder, you might want to go back and view the contents of the folder that encloses the current folder. To view the enclosing folder (and move up the folder hierarchy), choose one of the following:

· Choose Go⇒Enclosing Folder.

· Press +↑.

Each of these options changes the tab, if you’re using tabs.

· Hold down the key, click the name in the Finder window title bar to display the hierarchy of enclosing folders, and then click an enclosing folder.

Do the same on saved document titles in open app windows to see the folder heirarchy.

Following the folder path

Click the Finder icon on the Dock and then choose View⇒Show Path Bar. Displayed at the bottom of the Finder window is the series of folders that lead to the folder you’re currently viewing. Double-click any of the folders in the series to switch to that folder’s view. If you misplace or can’t find a file, click in the Search field of the Finder window, and then type the name of the file or a word or phrase it contains. Click the file you seek from the list of matches that appears, and then use the Path Bar to see where it’s hiding.

The Back command is not the same thing as the Enclosing Folder command. If you open an external drive and then switch to the Utilities folder on your hard drive, the Back command returns the Finder to the external drive, but the Go⇒Enclosing Folder command opens the Applications folder where Utilities resides.

Organizing and Viewing Folders

The Finder shows the contents stored on a device, such as a hard drive, which acts like a giant folder. To move, copy, or delete items within that folder or any of its subfolders, you first have to select the item(s), and we tell you how to do that. If your Mac’s hard drive contains a large number of files and folders, trying to find a particular file or folder can be frustrating so we show you how to search for and tag files and folders. To organize a folder’s contents, the Finder can display the contents of a folder in four views, which we discuss throughout this section. You can also preview files, and we tell you how to do that here as well.

To switch to a different view in the Finder, choose View and then choose As Icons, As Lists, As Columns, or As Cover Flow — or just click one of the view buttons on the toolbar shown in Figure 4-4.

Figure 4-4: The Icon view displays files as descriptive graphics with a name.

Selecting items in the Finder

No matter how you view the contents of a folder, selecting items remains the same. You always have to select an item before you can do anything with it, such as copy or delete it. You can select items three ways:

· Select a single item (file or folder) by clicking it.

· Select multiple items by holding down the key and clicking each item.

· Selecting a range of contiguous items by clicking and dragging the mouse. Or, in List, Column, or Cover Flow view, click the first item, holding the Shift key, and then click the last item; all items in between the first and last are selected.

Using Icon view

Icon view displays all files and folders as icons (refer to Figure 4-4). To organize files in Icon view, you can manually drag icons where you want, or you can have your Mac automatically arrange icons based on certain criteria, such as name or date modified.

To arrange icons within Icon view manually, follow these steps:

1. Move the pointer over an icon you want to move.

You can select two or more icons by holding down the or Shift key and clicking multiple icons.

2. Click and drag the mouse.

Your selected icon(s) moves when you move the mouse.

3. Release the mouse button when you’re happy with the new location of your icon(s).

When you arrange icons manually, they might not align with one another. To fix this problem, make sure that no items are selected and then choose View⇒Clean Up Selection to straighten them up.

Manually arranging icons can be cumbersome if you have dozens of icons you want to arrange. As a faster alternative, you can arrange icons automatically in Icon view by following these steps:

1. Click the Arrange button on the toolbar of the Finder window to open the pop-up menu, or choose View⇒Arrange By.

2. Choose one of the following options:

o Name: Arranges icons alphabetically.

All the following arrangements create sections to group like files and folders.

o Kind: Arranges items alphabetically by file extension, clustering together Microsoft Word files, JPG picture files, and music tracks, for instance.

o Application: Arranges items by application type.

o Date Last Opened: Puts files and folders you opened today in the Today section, those you opened yesterday in the Yesterday section, and so on for the Previous 7 Days, Previous 30 Days, and Earlier.

o Date Added: Same type of sorting as Date Last Opened but by when you added the file or folder. Added files may be ones that were copied or downloaded from another source as well as files or folders you created.

o Date Modified: Arranges the most recently modified items at the top of the window and divides the others in the time intervals as Date Last Opened.

o Date Created: Arranges the most recently created items at the top of the window and divides the others in the time intervals as with Date Last Opened.

o Size: Arranges the largest sized files and folders at the top of the window. Files are grouped by size divisions, such as 100MB to 10GB, 1MB to 100MB, and 10KB to 1MB.

o Label: Arranges icons alphabetically by color. Icons with no color appear near the top of the window, followed by icons colored blue, gray, green, orange, purple, red, and yellow.

If you don’t see the buttons we describe in the toolbar, choose View⇒Customize Toolbar. Click and drag the buttons you want to see from the bottom pane to the Finder toolbar. To delete those you don’t want to see, simply click and drag them down to the bottom pane, and they disappear in a puff of virtual smoke.

Using List view

By default, List view displays each item by name, size, date it was last modified, and the kind of item it is, such as a folder or a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. The biggest advantages of List view are that it always displays more items in the same amount of space than the Icon view, it displays hierarchies of folders as indented items (shown in Figure 4-5), and you can select items from multiple folders at the same time.

Figure 4-5: List view displays items in rows and folders as hierarchies.

You can change the width of the columns by hovering the cursor over the line between two headers until it becomes a vertical line crossed by a double-ended arrow. Click and drag left or right to make the columns wider or narrower. Rearrange the order of the columns by clicking and dragging the header title. Only the Name column must remain as the first column. Additionally, if you click a column heading in List view (such as Name or Date Modified), the Finder sorts your items by that column in ascending or descending order.

When you view your Macintosh HD in List view, user folders are identified by a folder icon and a triangle symbol (which Apple officially refers to as a disclosure triangle) pointing to it. Clicking that triangle symbol expands that folder to display its contents — files, more folders, whatever. Clicking the triangle again collapses that folder to hide its contents. If you click a folder with a disclosure triangle, and then select Option+→, the top level folder and all folders contained within it open. Choose Option+← to collapse and close all the folders.

When you expand more than one folder, List view makes it easy to move files and folders from one folder to another. Select multiple folders or files at one time by holding down the key and clicking each item you want to select. When you’re done selecting folders and/or files, you can then click and hold on one of the selected items and drag them all to wherever you want to move them — to another folder in that view, to the Desktop, or to the Trash on the Dock. If you have another folder, device, or drive open in a separate tab, drag the items to the tab. Then when the tab is highlighted, release the mouse or trackpad button, and the items will be moved to that folder, device, or drive.

If you don’t have many files or folders (or you just like everything sort of thrown together), the Finder has an All My Files option, which displays documents from your user account on your Mac, in the view you choose, sorted by the criteria selected from the Arrange pop-up menu.

Using Column view

Column view initially displays files and folders in a single column. As with List view, all folders display a triangle next to the folder name. (Okay, okay, in List view, the triangle is just to the left of the folder name, and Column view has the triangle at the far right, but you get the idea.) Clicking a folder displays the contents of that folder in the column to the right, as shown in Figure 4-6.

When you reach an application or document file, the rightmost column shows a preview of the application or document.

You can adjust the width of the columns by clicking and dragging the short, vertical lines at the bottom of the column divider. You can rearrange the order of the columns by dragging the headers, as in List view.

In any view, click the Arrange button to change the sorting criteria.

Figure 4-6: Column view displays the folder contents in adjacent columns.

Using Cover Flow view

Cover Flow view combines List view with the graphic elements of Icon view, as shown in Figure 4-7. Cover Flow originated from jukeboxes that let you pick songs by viewing and flipping through album covers. In the Finder, Cover Flow lets you choose files or folders by flipping through enlarged icons of those files or folders, which can make finding a particular file or folder easier.

Click and drag the resizing button just below the Cover Flow scroll bar up and down to zoom in and out of the image pane. To scroll through items in Cover Flow view, you have a number of choices:

· Drag the scroll box in the Cover Flow scroll bar.

· Click in the scroll area to the left or right of the scroll box on the Cover Flow scroll bar.

· Click an icon on either side of the icon preview image that appears in the middle of the Cover Flow view.

· Press the up- and down-arrow keys to select a different file or folder in the list portion of the Cover Flow view. Each time you select a different file or folder, the Cover Flow icon for that file or folder appears.

If you don’t see scroll bars, select ⇒System Preferences, and the click the General icon. Select the button next to Show Scroll Bars Always.

Figure 4-7: Cover Flow view displays both icons and item names.

Changing your view options

In any view of the Finder or any folder — Icon, List, Column, or Cover Flow — you can change the view options. You can also choose to make one style view the default for every folder you open in a Finder window or you can set different views for different folders. From any of the four views, choose View⇒Show View Options.

The View Options window opens, shown in Figure 4-8, displaying these choices from left to right:

· Icon view: Scale the size of the icons and the grid spacing, adjust the text size and position, and add color to the background.

· List/Cover Flow view: Set the same options. Choose small or large icons, the text size, and the columns you want to see displayed.

· Column view: Choose the text size and whether you want to see icons and the preview column.

In any of the View Options windows, you can choose how to arrange or sort the folders and files.

· Always Open in Icon/List/Column/Cover Flow View: Select this option if you want to see the selected folder in that view.

· Browse in Icon/List/Column/Cover Flow View: You want subfolders of this folder to open in the same view.

· Use as Defaults: You want the Finder and any folders to always open with this view.

Figure 4-8: Use View Options to customize how you view the Finder and folders.

Using Quick Look to view file contents

Quick Look enables you to see the contents of a file for many file types without having to run the application you would normally use to create, view, and save it. Just select a file icon and then click the Quick Look view button (or press the spacebar) to display an enlarged preview icon of the selected file, as shown in Figure 4-9. You have four options to close the Quick Look display:

· Click the Close button in the upper-left corner.

· Press the spacebar.

· Press the Escape key.

· Click the app button to open the file. The Quick Look window offers many options for working with the image:

· Resize the window by clicking and dragging any edge or corner.

· Click the full-screen button in the upper-right corner to isolate the Quick Look window from everything on the Desktop. In full screen view, click the Exit Full Screen button to keep the window open but return to the Finder, or click the Close button to close the window and return to the Finder.

· If you use a trackpad, pinch and spread to zoom the contents of the Quick Look window.

· Scroll up and down and left and right on documents that are longer or wider than the window.

· Click the Share button to send the file to someone as an attachment to an e-mail in Mail, an instant message in Message, or to another computer on the same network with AirDrop. Some files can also be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr.

· (Available for some file types) Choose File⇒Print to immediately print the image.

Figure 4-9: Click a file icon and press the spacebar to preview the file’s contents with Quick Look.

The Quick Look view behaves differently, depending on the type of file you’re peeking into:

· A recognizable audio file plays in its entirety, so you can hear its contents.

· A full-size picture file appears in a window, so you can see what the picture looks like.

· A recognizable movie file plays in its entirety, so you can see and hear its contents.

· PDF files and HTML files (web pages) appear in a scrollable window that lets you read their contents.

· A document file (created by other applications, such as spreadsheets and word processors) is scrollable if in a format that QuickLook recognizes, or displays the first screen of its contents along with a listing of its name, size, and date of last modification.

· A folder appears as an icon listing its name, size, and last modified date.

· An application icon is displayed along with a name, size, and last modified date.

If you don’t have the app that a file was created in, chances are that you can view it as an image by using the Preview app. From Preview, you can search, copy, and print — but not edit — image and PDF documents. Click the Preview icon from Launchpad. Choose File⇒Open, and then click the file you want to view in the chooser, which looks and functions like the Finder.

You can also sign PDF documents, which we explain in the article “Signing on the Dotted Line in Preview” online at www.dummies.com/extras/macsaio.

Creating Folders

In addition to letting you navigate your way through different folders, the Finder also lets you create folders. The main purpose for creating a folder is to organize related files and folders together. You create a folder in the Finder or the Save As dialog. The next sections walk you through each method.

Creating a folder from the Finder menu

Although many Mac users consider the Documents folder as the repository for all folders and documents, we tend to create folders directly in the Home folder and keep the folders for active projects on the Desktop. Each folder relates to a project or category and often contains subfolders and files in the subfolders. For example, the folder for a book project could comprise folders for each chapter, which contain the word processing and image files for the respective chapter. You can create and organize your files and folders in a way that makes sense to you — and that’s the beauty of the modern, flexible computer interface called Mac. To create a folder from the Finder menu, follow these steps:

1. Click the Finder icon on the Dock.

The Finder appears.

2. In the Sidebar of the Finder, click the location (for example, Macintosh HD) or device (such as an external USB flash drive) where you want to create a folder.

3. Navigate to and open the folder where you want to store your new folder, such as the Documents or Home folder or Desktop.

4. Choose File⇒New Folder (or press Shift++N).

An untitled folder icon appears with its name selected.

5. Type a descriptive name for your folder and then press Return.

Your new folder is christened and ready for use.

Creating a folder from Save or Save As

The Finder isn’t the only way to create a new folder. When you save a file for the first time or save an existing file under a new name, you can also create a new folder to store your file at the same time. You use the Save As command, which is the Duplicate command in apps that support Versions, such as Pages or Numbers. (To find out more about Mac’s version control feature, see the nearby sidebar, “Saving multiple versions of documents.”) To create a folder from the Save or Save As dialog, follow these steps:

1. Create a new document in any application, such as Microsoft Word or Apple Pages.

2. Choose File⇒Save if this is the first time you’re saving the document.

If you’ve already saved the document, choose Save As or Duplicate; choosing Save at this point only saves changes to the current document without opening a dialog.

A Save As dialog appears, as shown in Figure 4-10.

3. Click the arrow button to the right of the Save As field.

The Save As dialog expands to display your Mac’s storage devices and common folders in a Finder-like presentation.

Figure 4-10: Create a new folder while you’re saving a file.

4. In the Sidebar of the dialog, click the device where you want to create a folder and open the folder where you want to create a new folder.

5. Click the New Folder button (or Shift++N).

A New Folder dialog appears, as shown in Figure 4-11.

Figure 4-11: Name your folder.

6. Type a name for your folder in the dialog’s text box and then click Create.

A new folder is created in the location you specified.

This name can’t be identical to the name of any existing folder in that location.

7. In the main window of the Save As dialog, type a name for your document in the Save As text box and click Save.

Your new document is stored in your new folder.