How do I save a File on MacBook Air?

From PDFs to Word files, Excel spreadsheets, and HTML files, many Mac users have reported running into problems when trying to save various types of documents on their Mac. In some cases, they get a blatant error message that states that the word processor couldn’t save a file already in use in Mac OS 10.15, and in other cases, they get a more cryptic error message.

In the following sections, we show you what to do when you can’t save a document using Word for Mac OS 10.15, no matter what the error message says.

How to Fix the Documents Could Not Be Saved on macOS 10.15

Solution 1: Correct your Permission Settings

Your permission settings help prevent unauthorized persons from tampering with files on your Mac. But if you can’t save a document in any form directly on Mac OS 10.15, your permission settings could be behind this.

To stop your permission settings from getting in the way when you want to save files on Mac OS 10.15, revert back to the factory permission settings.

To do this,

1. Select “Go > Home” from your Finder’s menu bar. This brings up your home folder.

2. Next, go to “File > Get Info”. This brings up a window bearing your home folder’s info. You should find the “Sharing & Permission” section at the bottom of your screen. But if you don’t, then click on the triangle in that section to reveal it.

3. After that, you’ll find a lock button at the bottom of the window. If it’s closed, click on it and then enter your admin login credentials.

4. Now, open the Action menu near the bottom of the window, and then click on “Apply to enclosed items”, and then confirm this by clicking “OK”.

5. Next, a progress bar will appear on top of the screen. Once it’s completed, open the Terminal from the “Utilities” folder in your “Application” folder.

6. Now, enter the following path in Terminal: “diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u` “, and then select “Return”. If you get a Terminal report saying that permission reset failed, then proceed to the next step. Otherwise, just restart your Mac after the process is completed.

7. Close terminal, open the Apple menu, and then select “System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy”. Click on the lock icon, and key in your admin credentials.

8. Next, you’ll find a list of items on the left side of the screen. Select ‘Full Disk Access”, and then add Terminal to apps working with full-disk access either through the add (+) button or dragging and dropping the app into space around the top of the screen.

9. Now, open Terminal and then key in the command: "chflags -R nouchg ~”.

10. After that, key in "diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`”, and then restart your Mac once the process is completed.

11. Next, repeat step 7, this time around removing terminal from the list of apps working with full-disk access.

Solution 2: Reinstall Word on Mac OS 10.15

If you can’t save a document using Word for Mac OS 10.15 due to an error message that states that “the document cannot be saved due to naming or permission error on the destination volume”, you may be trying to save the file in a damaged or corrupt folder. These error messages are usually symptoms of damages in your Word app, especially the part of the app that writes to disk.

Running the MS Word installer to reinstall or repair MS Word is a quick solution that works most of the time. If the reinstallation or repairs fails, that could be a result of damages to the recovery files which Word creates for damaged documents (as found here:

/Users//Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery), or damages to the preference file for MS Word (as found here: ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist).

In that case, erase all the auto recovery files and .plist files, and then relaunch MS Word. If the problem still persists, then your hard drive’s file system might be defective. Try booting in Recovery Mode, or troubleshooting the disk with Disk Utility.

A few years back, Apple started hiding the Save As option from the File menu in all Mac applications, a move likely aimed at simplifying things for casual users. If that works great for the majority of people, power users like you and me prefer the flexibility and granularity of the Save As command.

In this post, I will show you three ways to use Save As on Mac. We will look at two different keyboard shortcuts, and we’ll also set up a permanent solution to bring back the Save As option in the File menu of all applications running on your Mac.

1. The temporary quick fix

If you don’t want to regularly use the Save As option, you’ll probably be better off with the quick and temporary solution that involves one single key and a couple of clicks.

While in any application on your Mac, click File in the menu bar, then hold the Option key on your keyboard.

You will see the Duplicate option change to Save As. At this point, simply click Save As with your mouse, then select the file format and save location.

2. The faster keyboard shortcut

As you can see on the screenshot to the right above, pressing the Option key to reveal the Save As command has also revealed the direct keyboard shortcut for Save As on Mac, no mouse required.

In any document, simply use the combination of the Option + Shift + Command + S keys to directly invoke the Save As command. Doing so will open up a window letting you choose a file format (if applicable), as well as the save location of the file.

More advanced users will probably prefer this solution over the previous one because it is more direct, although the key combination is a little harder to memorize.

3. The permanent solution

The final solution to bring back Save As on Mac is to create a custom keyboard shortcut. Doing so will permanently put the Save As option in the File menu, so it will always be available to you without having to remember any key combination.

We have already written a detailed tutorial on how to create custom keyboard shortcuts for Mac apps, so we won’t go over it all again in detail, and I invite you to check out this tutorial for the step-by-step instructions. But here’s a quick recap.

Follow these instructions if you want to permanently put the Save As option in the File menu:

1) Go to  > System Preferences > Keyboard.

2) Click the Shortcuts tab.

3) Select App Shortcuts in the sidebar.

4) Click the + sign.

5) Make sure All Applications is selected in the dropdown menu.

6) Exactly type  Save As… in the menu title. Make sure you type the periods (…) too. This is very important.

7) In the keyboard shortcut section, press Shift + Option + Command + S together or any key combination that you think would be easier to remember. Be careful, though, because the keyboard shortcut you choose might clash with other commands from specific applications. For example, if you were to choose Shift + Command + S, this shortcut is already attributed to the Duplicate command in Pixelmator. Your mileage may vary, and if all you want is to have the Save As option back in the File menu, I’d suggest sticking to the default Shift + Option + Command + S combo.

8) Click Add to save your new shortcut.

From now on, the Save As option will be available by default in the File menu of all supported applications on your Mac.

Important: In the first few tries, using Shift + Option + Command + S didn’t show the Save As… button permanently for me. But using Command + Shift + S did.

After that, I deleted this shortcut and tried again after restarting the Mac. This time, Shift + Option + Command + S also worked. So, make sure you try both.

Further note that, sometimes, you may not see the Save As… button permanently until you Force Quit the app in question (like Preview, Text Edit, etc.)

As you can see, there is a solution for just about everyone, from the casual to the most advanced user.

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