How do I open and close a file?

Opening a File

To open an existing Final Draft file: 

1. Choose File > Open and the Open dialogue appears;
2. Navigate to the location of the file to be opened;
3. Click the file to be opened;
4. Click Open.

If a Final Draft file is selected, a window containing the document opens, ready for editing or printing.

Final Draft Documents include scripts and text documents (.fdx extension), as well as templates (.fdxt extension). Although a Final Draft template can be opened using the File > Open command, a new document will be created as though a template has been selected using the File > New from Template command. If a template has been edited, choose File > Export > Document and save it as the same name as the original template. 

Final Draft 5-7 Documents are documents created in earlier versions of Final Draft (.fdr and .fdt extensions).

Plain Text Documents are standard text files (.txt) with no formatting.

PDF Documents are Portable Document Format files, a widely-used file type.  The PDF must be text-based, not image-based.

Rich Text Format are rich text files (.rtf) created by other word-processing programs with formatting retained.

File Converter Files are in an intermediate format (.fcf) used to pass files between very old versions of Final Draft (FD4 and older) or Final Draft AV and more recent versions of Final Draft.

If the selected file is a plain text, rich text or .fcf file, a dialogue appears asking whether the file is to be converted to a script or text document.  If the selected file is to be imported as a script, choose Script and the text will be brought in and formatted in the default screenplay template.

The document appears in a new window.

You can also open a file by pressing Command + O (as in Oscar, not zero) on Mac, or Ctrl+O on Windows, on your keyboard. 

To open a file you've been recently working on, choose File > Open Recent and select the file you want from a dropdown menu:

A window containing the document opens, ready for editing or printing.

Closing a File

To close the file you've been currently working on:

1. Choose File > Close. If the file has been changed since it was opened, the Save Changes dialogue appears;
2. Click Save to save all changes before closing the script;

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2. Click Don't Save to close the script without saving it.

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2. Click Cancel to return to the script.

On Mac, you can also close a file by pressing Command + W on your keyboard.