One of the menu bar menus which every standards-compliant Macintosh application has. The File menu is always in the second leftmost position on the menu bar, just right of the Apple menu, and contains items for commands related to entire files and documents. File menus are also commonly found in applications for Windows, GNOME, KDE, BeOS, and other graphical systems.

Commands almost always found in the Macintosh File menu include:

  • New -- Create a new document window.
  • Open -- Open (load) a document from a file on disk.
  • Save -- Store the current document into a file on disk, using its existing filename, if any.
  • Close -- Close (remove) the current document window, optionally saving the file.
  • Page Setup -- Configure the settings to print the current document.
  • Print -- Print the current document to the current printer.
  • Quit -- Exit the current application, optionally saving all open files.
Other common File-menu commands include:
  • Save As -- Store the current document to disk, using a new filename.
  • Revert -- Abandon any changes to the current document, restoring it to the state saved on disk.
  • Insert -- Import the contents of a file on disk into the current document.
  • Print Preview -- Display a graphic of what the current document would look like, printed with the current printer settings.
  • Open Recent -- Select from a menu of recently-edited documents.
  • Preferences -- Edit application-wide settings. (More commonly found under the Edit menu.)

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