10 Mac File Open Dialog Tips

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some tips for using the Open File dialogs on your Mac. So there are many ways to open files on a Mac. For instance, you can just double-click the file in the Finder, it will launch the app that goes with the file and show you the document. But often we just open files using the File Open dialog in an app. For instance, here I am in Pages, and if I go to File, Open, or just Command-O, this is called the Open File dialog. It's a dialog, it's asking you for something, and then you're communicating back to it what you want. In this case, which file would you like to open, and then you select a file. The window looks a lot like a Finder window, prompting a lot of people to actually just call this the Finder, but it's actually an Open File dialog. I'm in Pages here, not Finder. But a lot of the functionality is the same, starting with the left sidebar. Notice here in the left sidebar, you've got Recents, you've got Favorites, you've got Locations, all the things that you see if you go to the Finder and open up a new Finder window, you'll see similar items here in the left sidebar. In fact, the Favorites section of the left sidebar is something you can customize, and that will be reflected here in the Open dialog. Notice it's the same thing. So for instance, if I often want to use File, Open in Pages to open something in this folder here, I could add it to the left sidebar under Favorites, like that, and then I'll see that same folder here in an Open dialog. So now I can simply click on that folder there under Favorites in the Open dialog to go to it. It's the quickest way to get to the folders that have the files that you want. And don't be afraid to change it often. If you're working a lot this week with a particular folder, add it to Favorites, it'll be available to you in the left sidebar of the Finder and in Open, Save, and Export dialogs as well. You also have other Finder functionality. Like for instance, this display here showing you which folder you're in, that's functional. You can click on it, and then you can go up levels. So I can go up one level to the Documents folder and up another level to iCloud Drive. So you can see not only the full path, but jump to any of those. So I can jump to Documents there. There's a keyboard shortcut for this in the Finder that's Command-Up, and it works here as well. So I'll use Command and the up arrow, and you can see I go up one level. Now, this menu also provides a list of recent places. So these are folders you've recently accessed. So this could be a really useful way to get to a file you want, not necessarily looking in Recent here, which shows you a list of all files that you've recently accessed. You would sort them by date, modified, and maybe that could be useful. But sometimes it's more useful to actually look at locations. I jump right to a specific folder here that you recently used to find the file you want. It's particularly useful when you can't remember the name of the file you want, but you know you were working with it recently, and you'll probably recognize the folder name. Now, you can also search here. You've got a little search box, or you can just use Command-F to jump right to it and start typing. And here you can search for the name of a file, and here you can select File Name or Content to decide how you want to search. Also at the top, it'll show you Search, and it'll show you it's only looking in the folder you are currently in and all the cell folders under it. In this case, it doesn't turn up anything, so I can click this Mac to have it search my entire Mac for things that match this. And then once you find what you want, you can select it, and notice you'll see a path under here telling you where it is. That can help you confirm that it's the right file, but you can also just click on the folder there, like that, to jump right into the folder. If you find these videos valuable, consider joining the more than 2,000 others that support MacMost through Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it at macmost.com slash Patreon. You can use the Open File dialog completely with the keyboard. So here in Pages, I'll just do Command-O to open. Now, if I use the down arrow key, it's immediately going to go to the first file, and I can continue to use the down arrow key to go down, up arrow key to go up. I can even press a letter on the keyboard to jump to the first file with that letter. That works particularly well if you're in List View here. You can see I've got List View, not Icon View, selected, and I have everything sorted by name. So now if I just click D, it'll jump down to the first file starting with that name. But you can even type more than that. For instance, here, I've got several folders starting with D. If I wanted to get to this folder, I could type D-E, and you could see I get to it. Now, with a folder selected, I can press Return, and it will dive down into that folder. Remember, I can use Command-Up arrow to go back up. When I find a file I want, I can simply press Return, and it will open it. I could also use Command-Period to cancel or the Escape key to cancel the Open dialog. Now, let's say you're in an app like Pages here, and you use Command-O to bring up the Open dialog, and you're not where you wanna be, but you can see where you wanna be in a Finder window, like, for instance, this folder right here. You can drag and drop a folder right to the Open dialog. It'll jump to that location. You could do the same thing with a file. So, for instance, I could look in this folder here, and there is a file. I can drag and drop that into the Open dialog. It jumps to that folder with that file selected. Now, when you're in the Finder, you may know that there's a bunch of keyboard shortcuts associated with specific folders. If you look in the Go menu, you can see them. The Desktop is Shift-Command-D. Document is Shift-Command-O. The Downloads folder is Option-Command-L. If you're used to using these in the Finder, note that you can use them in Open dialogs as well. So, here I am in this Open dialog. If I use Shift-Command-D, I jump to the Desktop, Shift-Command-O, I jump to Documents, and Option-Command-L, and I jump to Downloads. Another way to navigate around in the Finder is to use Go and then go to Folder or Shift-Command-G. And then you can type something here, either a full path or a partial path, and it will look under Recents to find the folder you mean. So, I can start typing something like that, and you can see it selected there, and then hit Return, and I go to that folder in the Finder. Well, guess what? That works in Open dialogs as well. Shift-Command-G brings up that same thing, and then I could type something like that and jump to that location. Now, I quickly mentioned before, you can go to Icon, List, or Column View here, even the keyboard shortcuts that are in the Finder work for this, Command-1 for Icon View, Command-2 for List View, Command-3 for Column View. And when in List View, you also can sort by any of these columns. So, I could click on Date Modified to sort by Date Modified, click again, and it reverses the sort order. And if I Control-Click, Right-Click, or Two-Finger-Click anywhere in these column headings, I can add additional columns as well, and it'll remember them for the next time I use this Open dialog in this app. Now, if you're not sure which file you want, you may want to preview the file first. You don't have to go to the Finder to do that. You can do it right here in the Open dialog because Quick Look works. You can use the Spacebar, and it will show you a preview of the file selected. You can even leave the Quick Look window open, just move it to the side there, select another file, and it will preview that file for you. So, for instance, here in the Image Editing app, I can go to File, Open, and if I can't remember which is the one I want, I can select one, hit the Spacebar, and then I'm just going to use Down Arrow to go through each one here. When I find the image I want, I can press Spacebar again, and I can see behind Quick Look what it was I selected. And here's a couple bonus ones. If you want to switch from the Open dialog to the Finder, say there's something else that you want to do in the same folder, with any file selected, you can just do Command-R or Control-click, right-click or two-finger click to bring up the context menu, and select Show in Finder. Now it opens a Finder window right to that file. This works in Search as well. So, in the Open dialog, I can search for something, and then when I find something that I want, then maybe it's not even a document for this app, I can select it here, and then do Command-R, and it will open up that folder in the Finder with that file selected. Note you can also do a lot of other things in the context menu. For instance, you can rename the file right here in the Open dialog without even opening the file or going to the Finder. You can also delete the file. And a particularly useful one might be to duplicate it. So you're about to open a file, and you decide you don't want to mess with the original, you can duplicate it right here. You get a new copy of it. You can, at that point, rename it with the context menu and rename, or just have that file selected and return to open the copy that you made. So I hope you found some of these tips useful. Thanks for watching. Want to know about every new MacMost video each week? Sign up for the absolutely free MacMost email newsletter at macmost.com slash newsletter.