Version: 2008
Since there is no right click on a MAC, how do you delete a document of
folder within Word on a MAC?
Your MAC does not have documents or folders. It is the Media Access
Control protocol that makes up the lower sublayer of the datalink
firmware your network cards use..
On a Macintosh, often abbreviated to "Mac" it is almost never the
responsibility of a normal application to delete ordinary files or
folders. That is almost always done from the Finder.
If you are missing your right-clicks, you can either get a many button
mouse Ñ my fave is the Apple Mighty (wireless) Mouse Ñ or hold down the
ctrl key while clicking. The right-click menu that appears is known as
a "contextual menu". The actions available depend on the state of the
program and where you right-click. You won't find a 'delete file' in
there.
I used 'almost' in the first paragraph because sometimes the rules are
broken, often when the file/folder in question is buried in a library
managed by the application and only that application. For example, you
may delete a master photo from your Aperture Library from within
Aperture. I guess it is trying to kid you that your master photo is not
a folder full of magic stuff, but something even more magical, like a
photo with brains and memory and a sense of history, somehow separate
from the operating system you know and love.
Word docs on the other hand, are really truly files that can be
operated on by Word, mail, your backup programs, a few other scary
things like Adobe InDesign, and so on. It is not consistent design to
require such a universally used object to be deleted from only one of
the applications that can access it.
In other words, the Mac way of doing things is to have a special
program (the Finder) be the sole guardian of all file operations.
I guess you are newly arrived from the dar^h^h^h windows side. It won't
take you long before the consistency of the Mac UI becomes more
appealing than you find it to be at the moment.
