Over the years, Apple have changed the recommended layout and functionality of the File menu. At MacVector, we always try to follow Apple’s guidelines wherever possible so that new users will feel comfortable with familiar menus. However, long-term users may experience some confusion, particularly if you want to save sequences in a different format. Here is the definitive guide to the Save options in MacVector.
Save – this saves the current sequence (or alignment) in MacVector format.
Save As… – this saves the current sequence (or alignment) under a different name, but always in MacVector format. The open sequence/alignment window will change its name so that any subsequent Saves will act on the new file.
Export… – this is the menu option to use if you want to save a copy of the sequence/alignment in a different format e.g. GenBank, EMBL, fasta, fastq etc. There is a file format option displayed in the resulting dialog that lets you choose the format of the file. As implied in the menu name, this does not change the name or file location of the sequence/alignment.
Export Tab Contents As… – All of the above menu options act on the entire document. This menu option applies only to the data displayed in the current tab. So, in the example above, which is a graphical view of the sequence, selecting this will give you the option of saving the image in a variety of formats (PDF, tiff, png etc). Tabs that contain text will give options to save in different text formats, whereas “spreadsheet” type views give the option to save in tab-delimited or comma delimited formats.
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