I don’t mean to insult your intelligence with this one, but I’ve seen so many people who simply can’t find their own files that I suspect that this tutorial might just be helpful.
When you save a file for the first time, you will see a dialog box like the one on the right. I think it confuses a lot of people who perhaps are new to the Macintosh, although it’s pretty similar on Windows. I suspect that a lot of folks get so confused that they just hit the big ‘Save’ button without either naming their file or choosing whereabouts it is saved.
You will only see this dialog the first time you save a file. After that, whether you hit Apple-S to save, or choose ‘Save’ from the File menu, it will automatically save it with the same name, and in the same place you chose in the first place. If you want to save a copy with a different name, or save with the same name in a different location, or both, then ‘Save As’ is the one you want; everything here applies to ‘Save As’ as well as ‘Save’.
As you can see from the screenshot, you need to do two things: give the file a name that means something to you, and choose where on your hard disk it is saved. There is a third step on the screenshot regarding sub-folders, but that is optional; you don’t have to have a sub-folder, but if you’re saving all your sites in the ‘Sites’ folder (and why wouldn’t you?), it would a good idea to have each site in its own folder, together with any other items that go with the site, like a ‘Media’ folder for the images used on the site, and, if you export the site, the Export folder. That keeps everything together in one place. As you can see in the screenshot, this site that you’re looking at now is called ‘2010.rwsw’ and it’s saved in a sub-folder called ‘My 2010 site’. I made this sub-folder by navigating to the ‘Sites’ folder, by clicking its name in the leftmost column of the dialog; you can see it there, along with the User folder, Applications folder, Documents folder; they’re all listed in that left-hand column. When I was in the ‘Sites’ folder, I clicked the ‘New Folder’ button at the bottom of the Save dialog box. That gives you an opportunity to name the new folder, and I called it ‘My 2010 site’. When I clicked OK to that, I was then ‘inside’ that folder. I then hit the Save button and saved my site. Now all I have to do to find it is go to the ‘Sites’ folder, look for the sub-folder it’s in, and there it is.
The same goes for all other documents of different kinds, of course. If they’re letters to your bank, or anyone else, save them in the Documents folder. If they’re party flyers you’ve made, ditto. If they’re photographs, save them in the ‘Pictures’ folder; makes sense, doesn’t it? I don’t generally use sub-folders in the Documents folder; I just use Spotlight which will find any letter I ever wrote within seconds.
I know people who are only able to open files that appear in the ‘Recent items’ folder of whatever application they’re using. That’s fine, I do it all the time, but if you accidentally choose the last item in that menu, which is ‘Clear Menu’, you’re sunk. It’s important to know where all your work is, always!
Oh, and one last thing: it’s bad news to save a lot of stuff on your Desktop; it will slow your computer down if you have more than a couple of dozen or so items there. If you’re not confident about where to save your stuff, please take note of what I’ve said here. I know it’s tempting to save things to your Desktop because then you always know where they are; you can see them easily. But if you keep doing it, you’ll be slowing your machine down quite a bit.
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