Work Around For Save As… In Lion [OS X Tips]

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Duplicate Save As...

When Lion debuted, the Save As… function had been removed from the File menu, and an interloper – Duplicate – was put in its place. The problem is that if you use Duplicate, you end up with two documents, one with “copy” appended to its name. In addition, Duplicate has no keyboard shortcut. This has made a lot of us sad.

While we’ve reported that Save As… functionality is coming back in OS X Mountain Lion, that doesn’t help those of us using plain-old Lion right now. However, with a little work around, we can get the same functionality until Mountain Lion comes out.

First of all, open a document in Text Edit, Apple’s built-in text processing program. Either use a document you already have, or paste some text into a new document. Save as normal.

Now, make some changes to the document. This is typically when I would use the Save As… command in the past – to save a new version of a document, so that I wouldn’t end up overwriting the old file.

Go up to the File menu and click on it. Then choose Duplicate. A drop down dialog box will show up, and you have the option to Duplicate, Cancel, or Duplicate and Revert. Choose the last one.

Clicking on Duplicate and Revert will create a duplicate file with the word “copy” appended to the file name. Save this file with Command-S and you’ll be able to rename it something different, like “Rob’s Draft Number 2” or some such cleverness.

While this doesn’t bring back the keyboard shortcut, it does keep you from having to re-think and re-learn the perspective or workflow that you’ve built up over a ton of years as a Mac user.

Got an iOS tip of your own? Need help troubleshooting your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad? Drop me a line or leave a comment below.

Via: Mac OS X Tips

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