Apple 145 manual Making items easier to find, Creating an alias, Uses for aliases

Making items easier to find

Your Macintosh provides several ways to make a file, folder, or other item easy to find and open. You can

mcreate aliases for the item and put the aliases in convenient locations

minstall the item (or its alias) in the Apple (K) menu

mmove the item (or its alias) to the desktop

Creating an alias

An alias represents and points to a file, folder, disk, or other item (even a shared item on a network). You can make as many aliases for an item as you want.

1.Click to select the item you want to make an alias for.

2.Choose Make Alias from the File menu.

The name of the alias appears in italics and ends with “alias.”

3.If you wish, type a new name for the alias (the name is already selected), and then move it to a new location.

Uses for aliases

Alias for	Location	Purpose
Any item that	Everywhere the	You can get access to an
could be stored	item belongs	item from several places.
in several places
Apple Menu	On the desktop	You can easily add or
Items folder		remove Apple menu items.
A program that	On the desktop;	You can start the program
must stay with	in the Apple	without opening the folder
certain files	menu	or disk where it is stored.
A document or	Anywhere on	When opened, the alias
folder stored on	your work disk	asks for the disk by name,
a separate disk		then opens the original
		when the disk is inserted.
An item on a	Anywhere on	When opened, the alias
shared disk	your work disk	automatically connects to
		the shared disk and opens
		the item.

vTrouble? If you open an alias and nothing happens, or if you see a message that the original file isn’t available, then the original has been deleted or the alias is damaged. You can open the alias’s Info window to find out where the original is. v

128 Chapter 9: Organizing Your Files