I cannot save as to a specific file

You should have a sidebar on the "Save As...." dialog box. You can also add items to the Finder's Sidebar which will also show up in the sidebar of the "Save As" dialog box.

I also thought a few consistent locations may show up in that drop down box besides the "recent" list. Of course you would have to navigate to the actual location.

Customize the Finder sidebar on Mac - Apple Support

Edit: You can either add direct folders to the sidebar where you store most of your stuff, or you can add a parent folder to help minimize the sidebar clutter while perhaps increasing navigating to deeper folders for some saves.

I think you mean save to a specific folder ... not file.

When you do Save As you always get a save dialog box to select (and if necessary navigate to) the folder where you want to save that document.

You don't have to "Save As" to Dropbox. In the save dialog box you can navigate to & select any folder where you want the document to be saved.

Save As assumes you are saving a new file for the first time and, yes, you do need to select the destination. Thereafter, when you modify the same document and do a plain Save, it will save to the same location (overwriting the previous version of the document.)

DanMccarter wrote:

when I go to save as there is a box in the middle of the screen that list a number of places where I can file that document and I cannot change it I tried to take a photo of it but every time I try to copy it it went away but it has places like dropbox and some other places that that I can put them there's about 10 entries in the little screen but I don't want any of those entries I want to specify where I want to put the foul folder

You are probably seeing the default Save As dialog box. Looks like this:

Notice the button I circled in red. Click it and a larger dialog box will open where you can navigate to any folder on your Mac.

DanMccarter wrote:

You are right I am talking about a folder but in the old days we used to call the file folder so I've shortened it to file

Probably should shorten it to "folder" as a "file" is the thing you're trying to save to said folder.

See if anything here helps:

Organise files in folders on Mac – Apple Support (AU)

You are right I am talking about a folder but in the old days we used to call the file folder so I've shortened it to file anyway when I go to save as there is a box in the middle of the screen that list a number of places where I can file that document and I cannot change it I tried to take a photo of it but every time I try to copy it it went away but it has places like dropbox and some other places that that I can put them there's about 10 entries in the little screen but I don't want any of those entries I want to specify where I want to put the foul folder