Closing multiple windows that need answer in dialog box

TidBITS Talk
1

I was helping a friend with their Macbook Pro - MacOS 14.x.x

They had apple mail open and their were 50+ identical drafts covering the screen. I couldn’t figure out a way to close all the windows easily. Closing each window/draft brought up dialog box asking if I wanted to save the draft or not.

I wound up brute forcing it and closing somewhere between 50 and 100 windows each requiring me to click on ‘don’t save’. ugh.

Is there an easy way to close an app like mail that has multiple windows open that need an answer in a dialog box? Thanks!

2

I don’t know if there’s a tool for this, but see if your app has a keybaord shortcut for “don’t save”.

For instance, Photoshop Elements (at least the version I have) lets you type “d” for this dialog. But this is not universal - it doesn’t work for other apps. But try it. Or perhaps Cmd-d or something similar.

If that works, then you may be able to speed things up that way - type Cmd-W (to close a window) immediately followed by Cmd-D (or D or whatever works) to not save the draft.

Or alternatively, just type the Return key. This should take the default action (to save the draft). When you’re done, go to the drafts folder and just delete whatever you find there.

3

I was using Command-W to close window but didn’t find keyboard entry for ‘Don’t Save’ option so I just used trackpad and had to click on it.

I reckon this will happen again at some point so I was curious if there was a better way.

4

If you’ve already tried keystrokes and they didn’t work, then you may be right.

But if you haven’t actually tried it, but instead just looked for an underlined character on the button, give it a try anyway. I’ve noticed that many apps have stopped providing visual indicators for keyboard shortcuts.

And yes, this is absolutely horrible UI design.

5

Option-Command-W (or hold down Option while clicking on one red Close dot) will close all the Mail windows simultaneously while saving the unsent messages in the Drafts folder. Assuming there is some way to identify each from the To or Subject column, you could then delete the unwanted drafts individually or as a group from the Drafts folder.

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6

That’s what I found online and tried and it didn’t work (it quit mail but all windows were still open upon re-launch).

However, I just tried it on my own Mac (much smaller scale test) and it worked fine.

Thanks for reply.

7

⌘-delete should work for just about any dialog with a Don’t Save option. It does work in Mail.

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8
  1. Command-Option-W to close all windows
  2. Command-D (‘Don’t Save’) in each dialog.

BTW, these shortcuts are recommended by Apple HIG for any document-based apps. And, obviously, they work in their own apps.

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9

Ironically, it doesn’t work in TextEdit, one of their own most basic document apps.

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Well, if I missed somehow ‘Don’t Save’ button in TextEdit Save dialog, then pardon. But I doubt I did. This shortcut is tied to a button, which is not there.

11

Of course. The question is really for Apple. What good is the Apple HIG when one Apple designed app calls it “Don’t Save” while the next gets to call it “Delete”? Your initial advice is no doubt great, but it breaks down when Apple doesn’t follow its own guideline’s tenet of consistency.

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It would make sense to use “Don’t Save” for a saved document that has been modified, and “Delete” for a new document that has never been saved.

Dave

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13

I agree with that, but that IMHO doesn’t mean it’s ok to in the process break KB shortcuts.

14

Good question. It depends on the type of the app. If it supports the system document versioning, like TextEdit, then it provides a ‘Delete’ button, but only for cases when the document was just created and never saved before. On each consecutive opening of the document, if you edit it and just close with Command-W, no dialog is displayed at all and the version is automatically saved. Mail.app can also save its drafts without displaying the initial Save dialog if the draft was saved, but this does not rely on system document versioning anyway.

15

You can hold down the Shift key when launching Mail to not re-open previous windows.

Then clear out the drafts and you should be done.

The exact behavior you experience may depend on the settings for “Close windows when quitting an application” and “Ask to keep changes when closing documents” in the System Settings / Desktop & Dock pane.

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