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ChemDraw Beta 21.0 Portal
Created by Mike Rowley
Created on Nov 15, 2021

Mac saving behaviour

This may be quite specific, but nonetheless will be an increasing problem if it is to do with Apple Silicon

MacOs Monterey 12.0.1 MacBook Air M1 Apple Silicon

Make a chemdraw file with some stuff in it. Save it somewhere and email it (I used one of my email accounts to email it to a different one of my email accounts to simulate receiving an email from someone else). Or just receive an email from someone else with a Chemdraw file (which is where I first noticed this)

Open it from Mac mail by double clicking on the file in the email. So far so good.

Now change something. The title changes to 'Untitled(xxx copy)-Edited' (picture 1). Good - we are now working on a copy. Save it somwhere. Now make a change to a structure.

This is where it gets odd. You are told 'the file ....cannot be modified and asked to duplicate. Picture 2. So do that, make another change, and try to save. Again you are asked to duplicate. Picture 3. And so on. In other words, every time you save you have to make a new copy. I do not expect this behaviour, and it is not what I see In Chemdraw 20 in MacOs 12.0.1 on an intel iMac.


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  • Mike Rowley
    Reply
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    Nov 16, 2021

    Yes Stéphane. But in this case you have to create a new file every time you save it. That is Chemdraw.

  • Stéphane Mons
    Reply
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    Nov 16, 2021

    In Mail.app (and I think in any email software), you can't change an attached file, just like you can't change the text which was sent to you. The app only shows you what you actually got from someone.


    As a consequence, you will always (?) need to create a copy of the document which was sent to you. That is not related to ChemDraw.

  • Mike Rowley
    Reply
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    Nov 16, 2021

    This 'needing to create a new file every time you save' behavious will render Chemdraw v difficult to use....

    (There is a similar but intermittent behaviour in Chemdraw 20 under Windows 10. In that case Chemdraw writes some type of tmp file that seems to lock the file for saving. On Windows this behaviour only kicks in occasionally but when it does it is rather frustrating)

  • Mike Rowley
    Reply
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    Nov 16, 2021

    whoops, saved before adding Picture 4

  • Mike Rowley
    Reply
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    Nov 16, 2021

    Actually, this turns out to be more of an issue than I thought. It also applies to files that have never seen email.

    I make a new Chemdraw file and save it. Work on it a bit, and try to save it. Chemdraw tells me that it cannot be modified and I need to duplicate the file. According to the Finder, the file is not locked (Picture 1).According to Chemdraw it is (Picure 2). Chemdraw seems to offer me the chance to unlock it (Picture 3). But then tells me, no actually, I can't (Picture 4)