Easy Mac OS X Lion - Kate Binder [12]
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Caution: Adding Extensions
Hate documents with blank, white icons? You can’t open them by double-clicking because your Mac doesn’t know which program to use. If you know which kind of document it is, add the correct filename extension.
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Viewing File Information
Each file or folder on your computer has a lot of information associated with it—not just the data it contains, such as recipes or pictures or programming code, but also data about the file, such as when it was created, the last time it was modified, and which program made it.
Click a file to select it.
Choose File, Get Info.
The Info window opens to the General pane; to see the contents of another pane, click the gray triangle next to its name.
Click the Close button to close the Info window when you’re done.
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Tip: Avoiding a Trip to the Menu Bar
You can also press or use a contextual menu to get information about an item.
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Note: Getting Info
You can change some file information in the Info window, if you’re the owner of a file. You can change the name and extension, the program that opens a document, and the file’s ownership (if you’re an admin user), and you can add comments to help you find that document in Spotlight.
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Previewing a File
If you’re looking through a lot of files at one time, the filenames and preview icons may not be enough to help you figure out exactly what’s in each document. Say hello to Quick Look, a Mac OS X feature that enables you to see the contents of a file without having to open it. You can flip through each page, and you can even switch to full-screen mode to get a really good look.
Click a file to select it.
Choose File, Quick Look “filename”.
To view the document in full-screen mode, click the double arrows at the upper-right corner of the window.
To close the Quick Look window, click the X button.
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Tip: Quick Navigation
To enlarge the preview image, drag the corner of the window to make it bigger—the image will expand to fill the window. Use the scroll bar on the window’s right side to move through the document’s pages.
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Tip: Give Me My Space
A quick way to take a Quick Look at one or more selected files in the Finder is to press the spacebar. Press the spacebar again to close the Quick Look window.
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Opening a File
When you’re looking at a file’s icon in the Finder, you can open that file in the correct program without having to first start up the program. Conversely, if you’re already using that program, you can open more files without having to return to the Finder to locate them.
In the Finder, double-click the file’s icon. The file opens in the program that created it.
Or, to open a file from within a running program, choose File, Open.
Navigate to the file in the pick list and double-click it or click the Open button. The file opens in the program.
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Tip: Programs
Some programs are picky about which types of files they’ll open, so your file might be unavailable in an Open dialog box. If a pop-up menu below the pick list has an option such as Show All Files, choose this option to make your file available.
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Note: It’s a Drag
A third method of opening a file is to drag it on top of a program icon, either in the Finder or in the Dock. The program starts up, if it wasn’t already running, and opens the file if it can. If it can’t, its icon won’t darken.
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Choosing a Program to Open a File
Sometimes you disagree with your Mac about which program it should use to open a file. For example, perhaps you want to open PDF files in Adobe Reader instead of Preview, or RTF word processor files in Microsoft Word instead of TextEdit. You have the power to make the change; just follow these