Mac file structure ????

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Fine, I am going to get into the manual. In the meanwhile - I really need some help with the Mac file structure.

It seemed I had a lot more options on the PC as to where to save “documents”. For example, under documents, I had folders for Word documents, Excel documents, etc. Under each of these folders, I had subfolders for Household Word, Letters Word, and on and on. Same with spreadsheets.

It seems to me Pages forces me to save everything under documents. I tried establishing subs, but that didn’t work. Seems the folders just when where they desired.

Anyway - as of this time - I have the list of the right under Finder. myname, documents and I forget the others. Applications is one of them.

I have TWO document icons in the dock - one with a blue folder looking thing covering it. Then I have icon with the name Documents 17-19-59. Then the trash can.

I downloaded IDrive. Double clicking - I received the message “ Can’t open because the file is in the Trash! But it wasn’t.

By the way, is there a way to restore trash to its original position?

But files, folders, - organization is my thing. Oh yeah I have duplicates of some files in folders - which seem to prefer to stay there.

Can someone just give be a brief outline of how Mac stores folders and files? I can get into it deeper later, but right now I am very afraid of losing files. I had probably 30 “folders” under WP Documents on the PC. That way I knew exactly where to look for a particular file.

Thanks in advance. One day someone will have to tell me how to “backspace” - or go backward just to correct one letter.
 
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There's a little arrow on the right in the Save popup. Click on that and you'll get access to the full directory structure.
 

vansmith

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It seems to me Pages forces me to save everything under documents.
No it doesn't. You can save files to any directory that you have write privileges too (and those that you don't if you have admin privileges but I highly recommend you stay in your home folder). See Kash's advice.

Can someone just give be a brief outline of how Mac stores folders and files? I can get into it deeper later, but right now I am very afraid of losing files. I had probably 30 “folders” under WP Documents on the PC. That way I knew exactly where to look for a particular file.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this but if you're looking for the equivalent to the Windows file system layout, / = C: and /Users/<user name>/Documents = My Documents (roughly). You are responsible for storing files however you see fit in your home directory.

One day someone will have to tell me how to “backspace” - or go backward just to correct one letter.
Delete key will do this for you. The equivalent of the delete key on a non-Mac keyboard would be fn-Delete on a notebook (I think there is a separate key on a desktop keyboard).
 
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Yeah, the first few times I tried to save something, I was puzzled as to why there were so few choices of where to save it. Then I clicked on the blue arrow to the right of the file name and went "ohhhh"! There were all the file hierarchies. You can navigate through them to save your document wherever you want, and there's also a New Folder button you can use to create new locations.

Don't forget that you can click a View button within the Save window to see the file structure as a list, as icons, or as panes. These buttons also appear in the Finder window.

The file system isn't too different from the way Windows does things. Just open up a Finder window and you can navigate to and create folders within folders and organize them however you want. The only difference is that the leftmost Places pane lists the locations you're likely to start at: the hard drives, followed by external drives and CD's, followed by the Application folder, your home folder and your Documents folder, etc. (You can also remove and add locations to the Places list.)

Don't get confused and think that the Documents folder under Places is different from the one you find when you start navigating from the Macintosh HD into your home folder. The Documents folder that's listed in the Places pane is just a shortcut that lets you jump right to that location rather than navigate to it from the root drive. In other words, it's similar to having a My Documents shortcut in your Windows Start menu instead of opening up My Computer, then Drive C, etc to get to your documents. Same location, two different ways of getting to it.

As for the trash, did you try actually opening up the trash to see if that folder was in there, or did you assume that since the folder was still in the dock it wasn't in the trash? If you trash something, the icon will still appear in the Dock until you remove it.

Where is your trash now? Its original position is on the far right of the Dock. You shouldn't be able to move it from that spot.
 

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