How to “Save As” in Mac OS X Lion with an “Export” Shortcut

Mac users may have noticed that the longstanding “Save As” function has disappeared as of OS X Lion, and’Save As’ is something that many Mac users have become accustomed to using over the years. The default choices replacing “Save As” are two different features, Duplicate and Export, neither of which work quite the same, and neither of which are attached to a keyboard shortcut.

If you want to get your “Save As” function back on the Mac again, we will show you how to create your own keyboard shortcut to mimmic the old behavior of “Save As” so that when you hit Command+Shift+S, a Save (Export or Save As) dialog box will appear, allowing you to do the exact same Save As function that existed before.

1. Open “System Preferences” from the  Apple menu and click on “Keyboard”
2. Click the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab and then choose “Application Shortcuts” from the list
3. Now click the + plus icon to add a new shortcut accessible to All Applications
4. Type the Menu Title exactly as “Export…” with the three periods*
5. Click the “Keyboard Shortcut” box and hit Command+Shift+S
6. Click “Add” and close out of preferences

Open a file in any application and try out your new “Save As” (Export As) shortcut by hitting Command+Shift+S. No it doesn’t work exactly like the old “Save As”, but neither does the Duplicate command.

* Note if you’re on a modern version of OS X, you can actually type ‘Save As…’ into that field and return the true keyboard shortcut Save As functionality as of OS X Mavericks, Mountain Lion, and OS X Yosemite!

This tip aims to improve on some of the suggestions that have recently picked up steam on the Apple-centric web, where some people favor macro hacks or the same shortcut but related to the “Duplicate” function instead. This certainly works, but anything tied to the “Duplicate” function requires an additional step to save a document, rather than “Export” which brings you directly to a familiar “Save As” dialog box.