- [Narrator] In this movie I'll show you how
to safely close all open documents.
Specifically, here on the PC.
If you're working on the Mac, there's a sufficient number
of differences that you'll be better served
by the next movie.
So notice that I have a total of three documents
open right now as indicated by the appearance
of these three title tabs.
I'm going to start things off by making
some random changes to these documents.
I'll start by clicking on this big number one here,
with the black arrow tool and then I'll press
the backs space key to get rid of it.
And now, I'll go ahead and switch to the Welcome document
by clicking on its tab and then I'll click
on this group down here that contains my name
and I'll press the back space key to get rid of it, too.
And then, I'll go ahead and switch over to
that six page document that I created in an earlier movie
and I'll just go ahead and select the rectangle tool,
let's say, and draw a big rectangle
on this second art board.
And now, I'll go ahead and switch over
to what Illustrator calls the Selection tool.
I call it the black arrow tool because that's what it is.
And then I'll just go ahead and click off
that rectangle to de-select it.
Alright, now you can see up here, in the title tab,
that we have asterisks after each one of the titles,
which tells us that we have unsaved changes.
Now, I'll tell you from personal experience,
that the last thing that you want to do
is leave your computer this way, especially,
if you're working at an office environment.
Because it's very possible that somebody's going to come along
and want to close your documents,
whether because they want to quit Illustrator
or they just want to tidy things up.
And so what happens is, if I go ahead
and click on this little close button up here
in the title tab, I get a warning telling me
that I have unsaved changes.
And what most people are going to do is,
they're going to say, gosh I guess Sarah or Joe or whoever,
they of course want to save their work
so I'll just go ahead and click on a Yes button.
But in our case, we deleted some elements so
that could really be a problem.
Now what a conscientious co-worker should do,
which is pretty rare, is click the cancel button.
They should say gosh I have no idea whether Tom
or Mary wants to save the changes
so I should just cancel out.
What nobody does is click the No button and just assume
that you don't want to save your work.
And so what I'm telling you, is the only one
who really knows whether they want
to save their changes is you.
So what I'm going to do is cancel out here.
And let's say I go ahead and switch over
to the Welcome.ai file, which is an obvious example
of something I don't want to save
because I deleted my own name.
Now notice up here in the File menu
that you have a Close command and
it has a keyboard shortcut.
But you really want to do, is you want to close
all your open documents, you don't want
to have anything open when you walk away from your machine.
And so that means, in my case,
I'm going to have to choose this close command
or click on one of these close boxes a total of three times.
But you do have the option to close everything at once.
Now, while there is no close all command,
we do have a keyboard shortcut.
All you have to do is add the Alt key.
So in other words, you just press Cntrl+Alt+W.
And that's going to bring up one alert message after another.
All of which are going to offer the same buttons.
If you do want to save your changes,
then you go ahead and click on the Yes button.
If you don't want to save your changes
but you do want to close the document,
then click on the No button.
And if you want to cancel the entire operation,
just go ahead and click on the Cancel button
and notice that goes ahead and prevents
the other two files from closing as well.
But as I'm saying I very much recommend
that you do close your documents before you leave
the machine, so I'll once again press Cntrl+Alt+W
in order to bring up the alert message.
Now each one of these buttons has a keyboard shortcut.
It's Y for yes, N for no.
So you don't have to press Cntrl or anything like that.
Just press the Y key to save your changes.
Press the N key to close the file
without saving your changes.
And press the Esc key, that is the escape key,
in order to cancel the operation.
So what I'm going to do is click the No button here,
because I don't want to save the deletion of that one.
Notice that brings up another of my unsaved documents.
At which point, I'll just press the N key this time
to avoid saving the changes.
And then finally, I don't want to save the deletion
of my name either, so I'll press the N key once again
in order to close everything.
And now I can walk away from my machine,
whether it's public or private,
with the knowledge that my artwork is safe and sound.
And that's how you close all open documents
and decide for yourself if you
want to save the changes here inside Illustrator.