[OS X TeX] Placement of files

[Nitecki, Zbigniew H.]

I am, even after many years and several changes of computers and TeXShop installations, still confused about where to put things.

Here is my immediate problem:
I have a folder, called “Book(update 2018) which has the text files for a book; among the .tex file is also a folder called Bookmacros(2018) in which I have the user-defined macros I use in this book.This is an update of a book already submitted and in fact under production at the publisher, but I wanted an up-to-date corrected version, which is the intention of this folder.  In the master tex file (which calls all the others) I have the command
\usepackage{Bookmacros(2018)/formatstyle} pointing to the macro file inside the Bookmacros(2018) folder that governs some formatting issues.
It is clear to me that this file is not being accessed (but some other version elsewhere on my computer is) because when I compile the masterful
i get an error message about an undefined control sequence referring to a macro that I have triple-checked is correctly defined in the format macros.sty file inside this folder.

Can someone clarify how TeX searches for .sty files (and other macro files).
I recall that there is a central place where such files can be put to always be accessible to .tex files anywhere on the computer, and would like to be reminded of this, but also here I am concerned with overriding any obsolete versions of this file that may have been left lying around.  Am I using the wrong format to point into this subfolder?

Zbigniew Nitecki
Department of Mathematics
Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155

telephones:
my office     (617) 627-3843
dept. off.    (617) 627-3234
dept. fax    (617) 627-3966

http://sites.tufts.edu/znitecki/

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