10 Ways To Undo On Your Mac

While most Mac users know how to use the basic Undo function while working with text, there are many other wants to use Undo on a Mac. There are also ways to undo or restore things to a previous state that don't use the Undo command at all.



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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you ten ways to Undo on
your Mac.
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Now you probably know the basics of using
Undo. But there are many different ways and many
different situations that you can use Undo to go back one step in whatever it is you're
working on. Not all of those use Edit, Undo or Command Z.
So first let's look at the most basic situation.
That's while you're editing text.
Pretty much everybody knows how to use Undo
for that.
So you could go ahead and change something
in your text and then go to Edit, Undo Typing
and it will undo the change.
This also works if you delete something.
You can go Edit, Undo Typing and it undoes
the delete.
But what a lot of people don't do and take
full advantage of this because you can go
back multiple steps.
So while you're writing you can make a lot
of changes with confidence knowing that if
the changes don't work out you can simply
go back and Undo all the changes back to a
previous state.
Now while I'm sure everybody knows how to
use Undo in text not as many people utilize
it when they're editing images.
So, for instance, I'm in an editing app here
and they will all support this.
But I'm in Affinity Photo.
Now I can make a lot of changes here.
So for instance I could go to Filters here
and add lots of different filters.
I can use a Sharpen filter here and then I
can go and apply maybe a Color filter here
and then maybe Sharpen and even do a Crop
and even Draw on the Image.
I can Undo each one of those.
It even shows me what I'm undoing.
So Undo the Paintbrush Tool, Undo the Crop,
Undo that filter and every filter all the
way back.
But you could do this in just about any app.
Even complex ones like using video editing
tools like iMovie.
So say I want to make some adjustments here.
I can do that without worrying about how the
end result is going to look because I can
Undo multiple steps.
So I'm going to go in here and do an Auto
Color.
I'm going to go here and Adjust some of the
lighting.
I'm going to do a Crop.
I'm going to even apply a filter here.
With all that done I can Undo each step with
Command Z to go all the way back to how it
was in the first place.
Now even if you knew how to use Undo in those
three examples here are some that a lot of
people still don't know even though they have
been around on the Mac for awhile.
You can use Undo in the Finder.
Let's say, for instance, that I take this
file here and I move it to another location.
I can Undo that move with Command Z.
The same thing is true even for file name
changes.
So I can Rename this and I can Undo that Rename.
This works with multiple steps as well.
So I can move a bunch of things to a bunch
of different places and then Command Z, Z,
and Z to go back those three steps.
Now let's go outside of using Edit, Undo or
Command Z and see some other Undo functions.
For instance, in the Finder if you put something
in the Trash, let's take this file here and
move it to the Trash.
Now I could Undo that move to the Trash.
But let's say I put a bunch of things in the
Trash.
Like this one here and this here.
Now let's go into the Trash folder here and
have these three files.
What if I know that one of those is a mistake
and I need to put it back but I don't remember
where it came from.
You could select a file and under File there
is a Put Back Command.
Command Delete is the shortcut for that.
So this doesn't just take it out of the Trash
it actually puts it back in its original location.
It shows you where it goes.
I could do that for each one of these files.
As a matter of fact I can grab multiple ones
and do Put Back and those will go back into
their respective locations.
Now you can use Undo in the browser as well
even though you're not actually creating content
in the Browser.
One of the ways you can use it is if you close
a Tab, like I'll close this tab, I can go
to Edit, Undo and Undo Close Tab.
So it will reopen that tab.
But there are other features in Safari that
are also kind of like Undo.
If you go to History you'll see Recently Closed
Tabs and be able to go to any of those.
So even tabs that you close earlier today
or yesterday will appear here.
You can Reopen the last closed window and
you can reopen all windows from the last session
the last time that you Quit Safari.
Now other apps also support Undo when it comes
to moving things around or even Deleting them.
So here, for instance, in Mail I've got three
messages.
Let's do something different with each one.
For this one I'm going to Archive it.
For this one I'm going to put it into a Mailbox
folder here.
For this one I'm going to delete it using
the Delete key.
I can Undo everyone of those.
So Edit, Undo, Delete Message.
Edit, Undo, Move Message.
Edit Undo Archive Message.
I get everything back.
I can go back multiple steps undoing multiple
kinds of changes.
Now the Photos App has a special kind of Undo.
So if you go into a photo and Edit it you
can, of course, make changes.
For instance I'll change the light here and
I'll change the color and I can use Edit,
Undo to undo each one of those changes.
But even when I click Done and now it looks
like those changes are permanent I can Undo
and go back to the original anytime I want.
Even after I quit Photos and come back in
for many days or even months and years later.
I go to Edit there's a Revert to Original
button.
That's because Photos is a nondestructive
editor meaning it always keeps the original
around.
So no matter how long ago you made that change
you can go and use Revert to Original to undo
all of those changes including cropping, rotations,
and other things.
There's also a special kind of Undo that's
available in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote and
some third party apps.
That allows you to go back to previously saved
versions of the document.
So let's Save this document.
I'll just call it test and I'll create a new
line and I will Save again, Command S, another
line, Command S, and the last line, Command
S. Every time I saved, I saved a version of
it.
Only the changes between versions are saved.
So it's not like an entirely new document
is saved.
It doesn't actually take up much space at
all.
So now if I want to Undo back to the previously
saved version I can go to File and then Revert
to and I can browse through all the previous
versions in a time machine like interface.
So I can go back to this version here, restore
it or if I wanted to I could go into it and
actually Select and Copy text from it.
So if you delete a paragraph and Save and then a few days later you want to get that paragraph back you can use this to Copy it out and then hit Done without restoring anything and then paste it in.
Now one last thing I want to show you is that you can Undo an Undo.
That's called a Redo. So for instance here in Pages I can make a bunch of simple changes and I could certainly use Command Z to Undo all of these changes.
Once I've used Undo I can now use Redo. Usually the keyboard shortcut for that is
Shift Command Z although some apps have it a little bit different than that. So you want to check under the Edit menu for Redo. I'll just use Shift Command Z to Redo all
of that. So you can kind of go backwards with Undos and then forwards again with Redo.
So hopefully this gave you some more ideas about how to use the Undo command and similar things on your Mac. Using Undo isn't just a way to correct mistakes. It's also a way to give you the freedom to experiment knowing that you could go back a few steps if it doesn't work out.

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