Quick Filenames
Mac Tip #237/05-April-2006

The other day I was creating a couple of images. I named the first with a slightly complicated filename: ch-06-fig-change-perms-01.tiff, and wanted the second to have the same name, but using 02 instead of 01.

Click on a filename to pick it up.

To avoid errors I did one simple thing: while in the Save dialog, at the point where I could type in the name, I instead clicked on the file whose name I wanted to copy from the listing in the dialog box. [Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.]

The Save dialog shows a list of files in any folder you navigate to, so you can easily pick up the name of any file, just by clicking on that file in the listing.

Once I had the almost correct name I changed the sequence number from 01 to 02 and clicked Save.

This technique can be incredibly useful whether you need to duplicate a filename exactly, for example, to replace a file, or very nearly, as in my example. Try it out with some junk, test files and get a feel for it.

[Update 2009: if a simple click doesn't work, try Option click.]