How to save an Excel file to the desk top

Question

How to save an Excel file to the desk top

How can I save an Excel file to the desk top?

Posted on Oct 31, 2014 9:04 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 1, 2014 9:10 PM in response to David Plummer

David,

Your version of Office (2011) is the latest version available and is completely compatible with all current versions of Mac OS. So, that's not the issue.

When you are trying to "save" an Excel file to the Desktop, are you doing this from within Excel? I'm still very confused. If you are in Excel, create a new Excel document, then click the "File" menu and then "Save" (or Save As"), do you get a dialog that prompts you with "Save As", "Tags", and "Where" fields? Or do you get a dialog that looks like a full finder window. Either way, you should be able to type a file name into the "Save As" field, and then navigate to your "Desktop" using either the "Where" box or the full dialog. Then click the Save button and the file should be save there.

As a test, are you able to choose "Documents" instead of "Desktop" and save the file there?

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Answer 2

Oct 31, 2014 9:43 PM in response to FishingAddict

That's the 'normal' way to save to the desk top, but following that procedure, the only place I can save an Excel file to (except the HD) is to a 'pdf' file in the Finder. The Finder preferences only allow 3 types of files to be stored on the desk top, and Excel files are not one of them. This behavior only started after I upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion. I can't find a way to add to the items in the Finder's preferences or to the Finder's extended menu).

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Answer 3

Nov 1, 2014 11:18 AM in response to David Plummer

I'm not sure what Finder preference or restrictions you are talking about. There has never been a restriction about what types of files you save or store on your Desktop -- not in any version of the Mac OS and not in any version of Excel.

Arguably, you really shouldn't store anything but very temporary items or aliases on your desktop but many people do (people tend to use their Desktops to store files that rightfully belong in other folders like Documents). But, let's ignore that opinion and see what's going on in your case.

You say "The Finder preferences only allow 3 types of files to be stored on the desk top, and Excel files are not one of them". Where are you seeing such preferences?

Also, when you follow my 4 steps above, at what point are stopped from saving the file?

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Answer 4

Nov 1, 2014 12:01 PM in response to FishingAddict

If I open Finder, a window appears; click on "General"; the new window says

"Show these items on the desktop:" (check the ones you want)

Hard disks

External disks

CD's, DVD's ...

Connected servers

If you open "Sidebar" in the Finder window, you get a list of items that can be shown in the Finder sidebar.

Perhaps the problem is that my version of Office: Mac 2011 is not totally compatible with Mountain Lion??? I can save pdfs, PowerPoints, Word (docx) and images (img.jpg) on the desk top, but any attempt to save an Excel file to the desktop fails, and the "Save" menu automatically reverts to another 'location' in my 'Favorites' list.

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Answer 5

Nov 1, 2014 9:33 PM in response to FishingAddict

Hi Tim!

Yes, when I try to 'save' a file, I do it while I'm 'in' Excel. Yes, I get the 'queues' "Save where", etc., just like a normal 'save' routine. Yes, I can save the Excel file to 'Documents', but I want it on the Desktop to same time in accessing it. I've tried this with existing Excel files, and by opening Excel and creating a 'test' file - same 'barriers' exist.

Cheers,

Dave P.

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Answer 6

Nov 5, 2014 9:00 PM in response to David Plummer

David,

From your last comments I'm now guessing that you have a permissions or ownership issue with your Desktop folder. Please do the following and post what you get:

1) Open "Terminal" from Applications > Utilities

2) Type the following command and then hit the return key. This command will simply list the files/directories in your home directory and include the complete set of permissions:

ls -ale ~

3) Post the listing here.

Here is the chunk that we are looking for:

drwxr-xr-x 2 tim staff 68 Nov 3 19:23 Applications drwx------+ 9 tim staff 306 Nov 5 23:08 Desktop 0: group:everyone deny delete drwx------+ 5 tim staff 170 Aug 10 2013 Documents 0: group:everyone deny delete

These are the standard settings for my Desktop and Document directories. I'm guessing that your permissions, or the owner or group for your Desktop folder differ from these. If so, we'll need to fix them based on what you find.

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Answer 7

Nov 6, 2014 10:09 AM in response to FishingAddict

Hi Tim!

There's a whole bunch of entries that come up when I open terminal and key in the command you gave; here's what is shown:

Davids-Mac-Pro:Desktop pdf3$ ls -ale ~

total 38384

drwxrwxrwx+ 41 pdf3 admin 1394 Nov 2 09:12 .

0: group:everyone deny delete

drwxr-xr-x 6 root admin 204 Sep 19 14:58 ..

-rw-rw-rw- 1 pdf3 admin 3 Jan 24 2012 .CFUserTextEncoding

-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 pdf3 admin 39940 Nov 3 10:48 .DS_Store

drwx------ 2 pdf3 admin 68 Nov 6 09:02 .Trash

drwxrwxrwx 3 pdf3 admin 102 Feb 1 2012 .adobe

-rw-rw-rw- 1 pdf3 admin 302 Nov 6 09:20 .bash_history

drwxrwxrwx 6 pdf3 admin 204 Dec 31 2013 .blurb

drwxrwxrwx 3 pdf3 admin 102 Oct 21 2012 .config

drwxrwxrwx 3 pdf3 admin 102 Jan 27 2012 .cups

drwx------ 7 pdf3 admin 238 Jul 26 20:36 .dropbox

drwxr-xr-x 4 pdf3 admin 136 Dec 7 2013 .fontconfig

drwxrwxrwx 3 pdf3 admin 102 Mar 17 2012 .nchsoftware

-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 pdf3 admin 17 Oct 21 2012 .vbftpxmn

-rw-r--r--@ 1 pdf3 admin 1315548 Sep 3 2013 2014 Bellevue SW Collection Contract 04 15 2013 draft for RFP.pdf

drwxrwxrwx 2 pdf3 admin 68 Sep 21 11:04 Applications

-rw-r--r--@ 1 pdf3 admin 326665 Aug 30 2013 Bellevue Reliability Report 2012 042613 Final-1.pdf

-rw-r--r-- 1 pdf3 admin 6737 Sep 25 2013 Bellevue Reliability Report 2012 042613 Final.txt

-rw-r--r--@ 1 pdf3 admin 35892 Oct 30 22:15 Bellevue Utility Bills, 2015-16.xlsx

drwxrwxrwx@ 3 pdf3 admin 102 Aug 16 14:52 Burn Folder.fpbf

-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 pdf3 admin 25989 Jun 18 2012 Concerns Expressed to City of Bellevue Regarding Approval of.pdf

-rw-r--r--@ 1 pdf3 admin 165592 Sep 5 2013 David's Autobiography copy.pdf

-rw-r--r--@ 1 pdf3 staff 34836 Jul 26 21:21 Deck Repair, 2014.xlsx

drwx---rwx@ 35 pdf3 staff 1190 Nov 5 12:54 Desktop

0: group:admin allow list,add_file,search,add_subdirectory,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextat tr,readsecurity

-rw-r--r--@ 1 pdf3 admin 111548 Nov 15 2013 Document2.pdf

drwx------+ 18 pdf3 staff 612 Nov 5 11:43 Documents

0: group:everyone deny delete

drwx------+ 494 pdf3 staff 16796 Nov 2 22:09 Downloads

0: group:everyone deny delete

drwxr-xr-x 2 pdf3 admin 68 Nov 1 11:54 Excel Work Book

drwxr-xr-x 2 pdf3 admin 68 Oct 31 20:42 Excel Workbooks

-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 pdf3 admin 16862554 May 29 2012 Group Shot.psd

drwx------@ 53 pdf3 staff 1802 Sep 19 15:17 Library

0: group:everyone deny delete

drwx------+ 6 pdf3 staff 204 May 28 2013 Movies

0: group:everyone deny delete

drwx------+ 8 pdf3 staff 272 Feb 24 2014 Music

0: group:everyone deny delete

-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 pdf3 admin 117444 Jul 21 2008 P6M-2 In Close copy.jpg

-rw-r--r--@ 1 pdf3 admin 46473 Aug 16 14:50 PW-M-1 Overlay Budget.xlsx

drwx------+ 65 pdf3 staff 2210 Nov 5 11:43 Pictures

0: group:everyone deny delete

drwxr-xr-x+ 5 pdf3 staff 170 Jan 24 2012 Public

0: group:everyone deny delete

drwxr-xr-x 6 pdf3 admin 204 Mar 10 2014 Sound Transit Bel-Red Cost Estimate

drwxr-xr-x 34 pdf3 admin 1156 Sep 21 09:24 WW II Songs & Opera #1

-rw-r--r--@ 1 pdf3 admin 172859 Feb 25 2014 photo 1.JPG

-rw-r--r--@ 1 pdf3 admin 172859 Feb 25 2014 photo 3.JPG

Davids-Mac-Pro:Desktop pdf3$

I have no idea what all this stuff means, but I've done a 'disk verify' for both my drives, and the results indicated they were both 'OK'.Dave P.

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Answer 8

Nov 7, 2014 6:14 PM in response to David Plummer

Your permissions are not normal on the Desktop directory. Is your user account called "pdf3"? If so, then what's odd is that although the permissions are not the "normal" defaults, they are close enough that you should be allowed full access to your Desktop directory (assuming your user account is "pdf3").

I would suggest the following to try to get things back to normal:

1) Make a FULL backup of your Mac to an external hard drive. Time Machine is fine if that's all you have available but I would also suggest "cloning" your drive to an external hard drive using SuperDuper! (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html). Having such backups is always a good idea on a regular basis.

2) Then, open Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility, then select your hard drive in the left sidebar (typically the second line called Macintosh HD), then click the "First Aid" tab, then click "Repair Disk". This will check your disk for any directory structure problems and will correct any that it finds. Hopefully it will either tell you that everything is fine or that it repaired errors found.

3) Follow the instructions found on this page under the heading of "Reset Password - Lion (OS X 10.7) or Later": http://macs.about.com/od/Troubleshooting/qt/Mac-Troubleshooting-Reset-User-Accou nt-Permissions.htm

That should reset all the permissions of your user profile folders to their defaults. Hopefully that will solve your Desktop issues.

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Answer 9

Oct 31, 2014 9:13 PM in response to David Plummer

1) In Excel, click "File" menu > "Save"

2) click "Desktop" in the sidebar on the left

3) type in a file name

4) click "Save"

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Answer 10

Eric Root

Level 10

685,221 points

Nov 2, 2014 7:56 AM in response to David Plummer

Try using Save As. If you already saved it to Documents, it will continue to save there. You need to create a 'new' copy.

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Answer 11

Nov 2, 2014 9:15 AM in response to Eric Root

Hi Eric!

Yes, I've done that, but I don't want the file in "Documents", I want to save it to the Desktop.

Cheers,

Dave P.

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Answer 12

Eric Root

Level 10

685,221 points

Nov 3, 2014 10:00 AM in response to David Plummer

As a test, save a file to Documents and then see if you can drag it to the Desktop.

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Answer 13

Nov 3, 2014 10:52 AM in response to Eric Root

Hi Eric!

Nothing in my Documents file can be dragged to and left on the Desk Top; I can 'drag' 'em over to the DT, but they just snap back to the Documents file.

Dave P.

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