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Filed under: Editing •Post Production •Tips •

Quicktip Day 15: Option click to select a file name .... or not?

Quicktip #15 (February 15, 2009) Option+click (or maybe don’t Option+click) on an existing file to use that name

Thanks to Andy Mees and the power of Twitter I got a question about today’s Quicktip #15. Andy said: “scott, is it just me? i get the filename behaviour you blogged without pressing a modifier ... just click, works system wide, no?” I had always thought you had to use Option so I tried it while saving a PDF on my laptop and much to my surprise I didn’t have to hit Option to use the name of a file already on disk. But when I got up to my production machine to update this post I find I have to use the Option modifier. What gives? Anyone have any answers? Do you have to use the Option key or don’t you?

If you already have a file saved on your hard drive and you export and/or save a file you can option+click on a file already save on disk while in the save/export dialog box to select that file’s name:

This is particularly helpful if you are saving incremental versions of a file and don’t want to type the name over and over. Just option+click the file and add a version number. It’s also helpful if you export a QuickTime and then make a change and need to export again and not keep the first file. Option+click to select the same file name and then choose to replace the old file when promoted.

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I can do it without pressing Option. They added this ability later on (10.3 I think) and normally when they add something that changes the way people do things, they add an option in a preference file to disable it.

So there is probably a hidden option somewhere that you perhaps enabled with a system utility like Onyx.

Or it could be that the app in question customizes the save dialog so that it doesn’t respond the way you’d expect it to.

Posted by Jon Chappell  on  02/16  at  04:33 AM

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My G5 (Power PC) seems to have the ‘without Option’ function turned on which I don’t like as its caused me to save over wrong files before without realising. I’d like to know where this hidden function is.

Thanks for the tips BTW!

Posted by Robert Dee  on  02/16  at  04:58 AM

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I checked an old eMac G4 and I don’t have to use Option either .... so out of 4 Macs in my house (that’s too many btw) it’s only on my G5 tower. Damnedest thing. I don’t have Onyx on the machine but I looked through MacPilot and didn’t see an option to enable or disable that function. Think that maybe my machine is haunted?

Posted by Scott Simmons  on  02/16  at  09:12 AM

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