So what does the Move To command in these iWork apps actually do?įirst, it surprises you by not adopting the standard human interface.

Because a move to a different volume creates a new file, though, you should normally expect it to break each of those, particularly saved versions. Most important of all, it preserves any saved versions in the macOS versioning system. It doesn’t break hard links, of course, nor Finder Aliases. Moving a document within the same volume preserves anything associated with it, apart from symbolic links to it. There are some subtle side-effects which are worth considering too. It’s also worth noting that, during move operations, although the original document is deleted, it isn’t put in the Trash but removed once the new copy has been saved.

In the Finder, you can always opt to move a document to a different volume by holding the Command key down for the operation, and holding the Option key when dragging to a different location on the same volume results in a copy rather than move. Although consistent with Apple’s model that iCloud Drive is part of your Home folder, that isn’t how it’s shown in the Finder, and becomes even more confusing when part of your Home folder is stored on an external volume. That is unless you drag an item from a non-boot volume to iCloud Drive, in which case it behaves as if it’s being copied between two different volumes.

More recently, Apple broke this convention with dragging documents to and from iCloud Drive, something that I drew attention to in this article. The longstanding convention in the Finder has been that dragging a document from one location to another on the same volume has moved that document, whilst performing this same act to a different volume has copied the document to the other volume, leaving the original in place, rather than moving it. This article looks at why you might (not) prefer to use that instead of the Finder. But recent versions of Apple’s iWork apps – Pages, Numbers and Keynote – have offered a menu command to move the current document to a different location. Ever since the first Mac, the Finder has provided a common interface for moving and copying documents.

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