Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with automator

How to bulk rename itunes files from external data source.

jlowen — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:10:40 -0800

How can I bulk rename files in itunes according to data contained in a separate file? I have 4000-some .wav files in itunes that are essentially field recordings of people talking. The files are named with a 10 digit unique id number and the date acquired. Example: 1234567890_11122009. In a separate csv file I have the identifying information of the individual with the same unique ID number.

I have rated all 4000 recordings based on quality and want to maintain those ratings, but would like to rename the files to drop the unique ID and instead insert the person's name from the csv file. I.e. 1234567890_11122009 becomes Smith_Mary_123_Fake_Street_Anytown_STATE

Can anyone picture a workflow that would accomplish this mass filename change while still maintaining the ratings?

I use a mac and have a decent understanding of automator, grep, csv files etc, but have no real programming skill. I am willing to convert recordings to a different format (mp3 etc.) if that would help. Any ideas?

I am not an Automator-aton

Scientifik — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:41:13 -0800

How can Automator help me save a bunch of files? I have ~200 video files. I would like Automator to open them in Quicktime X, and perform a "Save as" in a different folder with the same filename. I know it sounds like I'm just duplicating them but bear with me. I'm totally clueless in using Automator and recording the actions isn't working, perhaps I'm doing it wrong.

Need to automate a weekly task using AppleScript

joshrholloway — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:20:15 -0800

I need to automate the process of printing a report to PDF with the date in the file name, saving it in an archive folder, printing it, and emailing it as an attachment. I am on a Mac and using Pages, Automator, and AppleScript. Help me find the missing pieces! I have to write a report each Friday for work and send it as an attachment to a specific email address where it gets processed by an internal server. Usually my process is as follows:

1. Write report in Pages.
2. Print report as PDF to a specific folder using OS X's built-in capabilities.
3. Name the PDF file based on the date.
4. Print the PDF file to a hard copy.
5. Attach the PDF to an email using Mail and send it.

I realize that's not a ton of work, but this Friday I felt the urge to automate the process. At first I wanted to do it to save myself some time, and then once I had spent an hour trying to figure it out it became more of a challenge, and then after spending another hour on it I didn't care about solving the problem myself and just wanted a solution by any means necessary.

Most of the individual pieces of this automated task are not difficult to accomplish, but I have found it difficult to get each step to talk to the next. I have also had trouble due to the fact that I want to make the file name of the saved PDF contain the date it was saved. I'm sure this would be easy for anyone who has used AppleScript extensively, but I'm just a beginner at it so it's baffling me.

Could someone help me figure out the proper script structure to make all this work? If it matters, I am using the latest version of OS X and Pages. The files need to be saved with the name "weekly_report_MM_DD_YYYY.pdf" (it doesn't have to be exact, just something along those lines) and the email that it is attached to doesn't need anything in it except for a recipient. If I've forgotten any necessary details, please let me know and I'll provide them.

HELP!

Can Automator Do This

crapples — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:26:35 -0800

I want Leopard's Automator to do something seemingly simple, but can't get it to work. Can anyone help? When I used Office 2004 I had a simple VBA script that typed the current date, hit [return], hit [tab], then typed the current time. I used this script every time I started notes for a meeting, or other types of entries.

Can Automator do this? Again, the steps:

Add Current Date
Return Character
Tab Character
Add Current Time
Add a ":" character

Pretty simple, but I can't get it to work.

Email client not working properly? You don't say...

GleepGlop — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:43:46 -0800

I created an Automator Workflow to do a daily automatic offsite backup of my documents. The only snag is that when I get my mac's Mail program to send the email to my gmail account, most of the time the message just sits in the outbox and doesn't actually send; but sometimes it starts sending right away. What gives?

How do I use either/or logic inside an OSX Automator action?

JPowers — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:03:04 -0800

How do I use either/or logic inside an OSX Automator action? This seems SO bloody simple, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

So I've got an Automator workflow that finds all of the files with an extension of .avi inside a certain folder, then does something with them. This works great, but what I REALLY want is for the workflow to search for all files in the folder that have an .avi *or* a .wmv extension. Is this possible?

I've tried "avi OR wmv", "avi {or} wmv", "avi "or" wmv" and anything else you could possible imagine.

The specific action I want to be able to put the either/or operator into is the "Filter Finder Items" action. This is a default Automator action that comes with OSX.

*beating head against desk*

Can an Automator Workflow/App Find Itself?

Xuff — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:06:13 -0800

Obscure Mac geekery filter... On OS X Leopard, how can I get a reference to the current location of an Automator workflow/app in a shell script within that workflow? I've got a complex Automator workflow that currently has to move files in and out of various directories. Currently these directories live in a specific location that's hard coded into the workflow. What I'd like to do is have the workflow be able to reference it's own package and create the directories it needs inside itself (ex. /some/random/path/myworkflow.workflow/Contents/niftyFolders) or, barring that, just create the directories in the same directory the workflow itself is currently in. Unfortunately I can't find a way to get the location of the workflow itself.

I'm thinking the most likely way to do it at this point is with AppleScript, and I've looked into that a little, but have come up empty. AppleScript and I have never clicked, so I thought I'd turn to all of you.

Thanks!

RSS to Audio in Automator

jasmarc — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:49:55 -0800

How can I operate on individual articles from an RSS feed in Automator? Ultimately I am trying to create audio tracks of my feeds - one track per articles. I know that you could do "Get Specified URL" then "Get Text From Articles" and then "Text To Audio File" however this will create a single audio track of all the articles. I want to bust the articles out as individual tracks.

Mom, meet Mac! You'll LOVE it, it's SO simple...

dpcoffin — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 12:12:40 -0800

Mom's FINALLY decided she'll get a computer. I'm gonna help, so it'll be a MacBook. I know there's been a lot already here on this topic, but... ...since this means I'll be upgrading to 10.5 myself as well, I'm looking for ideas specific to this spiffy new world. I'm of course also combing the net for articles on this and buying some Leopard manuals, so I'm here mainly for links, tips and anecdotes from anybody who's recently been over this exact ground.

Details:
She's a vigorous, sharp, but distinctly OLD-world 84, still running her own Montessori preschool, and for years now has been very vocal in her disapproval of computers for all manner of reasons. 5 recent minutes with PhotoBooth and Mail on a shiny new iMac miraculously changed her mind, at least for keeping in touch and penning her memoirs...

She's on one coast; I'm on the other. I'm shipping the MacBook to her after I set it up. We'll both have .Mac accounts and broadband, so I'm interested in video Chats and remotely controlling her desktop when showing her stuff/fixing things. And I've never done either before...

She says she just wants to write and do email, and is scared of the mouse. I have no idea how, or IF, she'll take to actually learning to use and customize the Finder, etc., so I'm planning to record some how-to videos and put 'em on her desktop. I'm also streamlining her Mac with preset Spaces for auto-launched Mail, Pages, Safari, creating a few Pages templates, and maybe adding in LaunchBar for easy keyboard automation (without explaining to her what it is...), and...wondering what else I might do. Got any cool thoughts on how I can maybe use Automator and/or some other keystroke-creation utility to automate basic texty/searchy/sendy things she'll want to do? Should I maybe make myself the Adminstrator? I want to keep everything DIRT-simple and totally stumble-proof, at least initially.

She's VERY suspicious of the Internet, both culturally and ethically, but I'm sure she'll learn to love it eventually as a great big replacement for her 1911 Britannica and her Home Book of Verse. But I'm DREADING her first brush with porn spam or pictures... Might some kind of "parental" controls or other filters prove useful? Never used these either...

Many thanks in advance for all comments!

Automator and PowerPoint

COBRA! — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:00:49 -0800

How can I use Automator to make a PowerPoint presentation run? This is probably easy, but I can't make it work, and I can't google enough pieces of the picture to bring it together. So here goes: how can I set up an Automator workflow to make a PowerPoint presentation open automatically and start scrolling through slides? The more detailed you can be about the workflow, the better, as the whole Automator interface feels really weird and counterintuitive to me.

How to create automator action to resize images to a certain width?

krunk — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 08:37:54 -0800

How do I create an automator action to resize images to a certain width? The "scale images" action only resizes the longest side, which is sometimes the height, not the width. I want a quick action to resize images for blog posts, so they are 470px wide, no matter what. Images that are taller than they are wide get the height scaled down to 470px, but then the width is less than 470px.

How to create a unique osx automator action that randomly renames files?

jeremias — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:26:03 -0800

How to create a unique osx automator action that randomly renames files? Here's something I'd like to make OSX Automator do: I have a folder full of 1000 files named sequentially 001.jpg, 002.jpg, etc.

I would like an Automator action that randomly renames the files but keeps the original filenames intact.

(Ie. 001.jpg would be renamed 356.jpg for example, 248.jpg would be renamed 129 or some random number)

Any ideas how to make this happen?

URL Find and Replace

nathan_teske — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:21:33 -0800

I'm working on a quick Automator workflow and need some help replacing the local hostname in a series of URLs. Here's the deal: the Automator workflow retrieves a list of return delimited URLs with random alphanumeric local hostnames (e.g., wrim881q.example.net, ghu2z.example.net, etc.). I need to pass these into a shell script and change them all to the same local hostname (e.g., foo.example.net) and then download all the URLs with curl.

Help?

Automator workflows for Excel

lackutrol — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 16:50:41 -0800

Automator as an antidote to Excel tedium. Can you help me get through repetitive tasks with favorite Automator tricks in Leopard? I would like to be able to open a new Excel workbook, create worksheets based on an existing list, and copy formatting to each sheet. Can you point out Web resources for an Automator amateur, whether general or for Excel in particular?

Is it possible to export an .ics file from iCal containing just today's events from specific calendars?

jack_mo — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:28:39 -0800

Is it possible to export an .ics file from iCal containing just today's events from specific calendars? I assumed I'd be able to do this with Automator, but it doesn't have any actions for exporting from iCal.

So is there a way to do this, perhaps with Applescript? I've tried Googling to no avail - there seem to be plenty of scripts to export todo items in various ways, but nothing regarding calendars for a given date that I could find.

Alternatively, is it possible to make a new 'daily' calendar containing all today's events from specific calendars (and nothing else), which I could then export manually? Again, I can't get Automator to do this - the New iCal Events action won't take input from Filter Items in iCal or Get Specified iCal Items.

I'm running iCal 3.0 on OS 10.5.

The lowdown on the downloads -- how to stay organized?

Robot Johnny — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 10:06:11 -0800

How to best organize and maintain my Downloads folder in OS X? Automator tips? My Downloads folder currently has 96 items in it... I know I should just take the time to manually sort and delete/save it all, but I'm curious how other people manage to organize their downloads.

Are there any useful Automator tricks? It would be handy for files older than a week or so to automatically be moved elsewhere, but as far as I can tell, OS X only recognizes a file's created-on date, not its saved-to-this-folder date.

Automator-filter: Help me redact!

rabbitsnake — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:47:32 -0800

How do I automate image redaction with Automator? I looked high and low for an automator action to put a white box over a certain part of a TIFF file. I have over 500 images that need to be redacted in the same place. All the image actions I find involve applying filters and other specific menu actions, but I want to draw a box over text in the lower left corner of an image.

If there is a free way to do this otherwise with Windows, Linux or Mac, I am open to suggestions.

PDF me.

donguanella — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:47:41 -0800

How do I batch convert a bunch of word documents into PDF files, using Automator (in OS X?) I'm stumped.

How to make this automator action?

Tlogmer — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 19:16:08 -0800

Tearing my hair out over automator and applescript. I'm trying to create an action that will change my desktop background: display photos of morning scenes in the morning, evening scenes in the evening, day scenes in the day, etc.

I've glue-sticked together an applescript that will find out the time and and put it in a variable as one of three words: morning, day, evening and night.

set TheDate to current date

set theDateText to TheDate as text

set theTime to time of TheDate

set theHour to theTime div 3600



if theHour > 6 and theHour < 11 then set thename to morning end if if thehour> 10 and theHour < 19 then set thename to day end if if thehour> 18 and theHour < 23 then set thename to evening end if if thehour> 22 then

	set theName to "night"

end if



if theHour < 7 then set thename to night end if/code>

But I can't for the life of me figure out how to get that variable into the next automator step, even though I have folders in ~/Backgrounds named "morning" "day" "evening" and "night" full of flickr images ready and waiting the be fetched randomly and plugged into automator's built-in "set as desktop background" step. I can get "day" (or "evening" or whatever) to get entered into spotlight, but that doesn't do much good.

(It would be even cooler if someone knew of a way to pull the photos straight from flickr, but that sounds hard. I am, it should be obvious at this point, not a programmer at heart.)

Uses for Automator

charmston — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 16:33:38 -0800

I'm overwhelmed by Automator. What are some of the ways that you use it?

Automating Safari in OSX

se7encrows — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:10:20 -0800

In OSX 10.4.5, is there an Automator workflow or a way in iCal to have Safari open a particular website at a particular time everyday? I basically want Safari to open to a specific URL at the same time everyday. Is this possible?

How do I script removal of the head and tail of a file up to and after given comments?

mph — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 13:44:02 -0800

Given BBEdit (or sed) and a file of HTML, how can I script the deletion of all text up to a given comment tag, skip over deleting the part of the file I want to keep, then resume deletion of contents after the next occurrence of a given comment tag? I edit a site that calls for me to periodically repurpose content from other sites in our company.

I've written an Automator workflow that handles grabbing the printer-friendly version of a given article I'm repurposing, runs it through TextSoap to strip smartquotes and other stuff I hate, replaces some absolute links to be appropriate to the article's new home, slaps on a line attributing the original source for the story, and loads it into BBEdit.

At this point, it's a pretty simple operation to manually cut out the gunk I don't want, which is everything in the page source before a comment tag that reads "content_start" and after a comment tag that reads "content_stop", but I'd really like to automate this part, too, for the sheer pleasure of having an end-to-end workflow.

I just don't have the scripting chops to describe "delete all the lines up to this comment and delete all the lines after that comment."

It seems doing this in Applescript using BBEdit's scripting dictionary or doing it with a line or two of sed would be equally adequate.