If you have a second try this: open a picture that you have a backup of (very important!) in Preview. On the toolbar, select Markup, then click on the text box and add some text. Don't save, export, or print the picture - just close the window. On my system (Mojave) and Preview version 10.1, no alert box comes up to ask if you want to save changes - the window simply closes. Open the file again in Preview and the text is there - but unselectable and not able to be edited or deleted. The file is "flattened."

Yes I know - Preview is not a high-end PDF editor. But in every other program I've used in, oh, 35 years, when you close a file that's been changed without having been saved, I've always been alerted to this. I thought this was software design 101. I wasted some time today - not a big deal, just surprising from a software design point of view, coming from Apple especially – unless there's some logic to this that I'm not getting!

I recently needed to quickly change the size of about a dozen images. I would normally use Photoshop but didn't have the time so I googled and I found that Preview could do it. So I followed the steps. Opened all the images. Selected them all. Resized and...nothing. Couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong so I quit Preview and figured I'd just do it in PS. Imagine my surprise when I went to my images and discovered they had all been resized! Preview offered literally ZERO feedback that it had done anything when in reality it had resized all my images and then saved them...OVER THE ORIGINALS! No "are you sure you want to overwrite". No nothing. I was so pissed. Luckily I hadn't deleted them off the SC card so I was able to pull them in again.

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Wow, I wonder what's up with this? I would think that confirming changes before saving and overwriting a file is something so basic you don't even have to mention it. Glad you had backups!

It's been that way for a long time. I have learned to always make annotations on a backup copy of a file.
That's still easier than taking a photo to Pages, Pixelmator or other apps to make such notions such as arrows or text.

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“Live your life, love your life, don’t regret…live, learn and move forward positively.” – CR Johnson
Loving life in Lake Tahoe, CA

Yea it's funny I just discovered this "feature" now, seeing I've used Preview since OSX 10.0! Anyway I forgot to mention that like bazookaman, when I closed my window my file was overwritten like his. This is really a no-no, imo.

Markintosh, totally agree on some of Preview's features being easier to use than other sw. I once tried to use Photoshop to draw some curved arrows. Preview is WAY easier. Actually I think it's a really cool program that covers a lot of bases for folks that don't need pro-level editing. Now that I know better how it behaves with changed files I'll just be more careful!

Oddly enough, I found a checkbox under System Prefs/General: Ask to keep changes when closing documents.
Try that.

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Central VA

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CJsNvrUrly
Oddly enough, I found a checkbox under System Prefs/General: Ask to keep changes when closing documents.
Try that.

Who knew? LOL That took care of the issue!

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“Live your life, love your life, don’t regret…live, learn and move forward positively.” – CR Johnson
Loving life in Lake Tahoe, CA

Well I never.... there you go. All better now! I take it this pref setting is specific to only the Apple apps installed with MacOS? I wonder what other apps are affected by it.