Watched Folders

July 25, 2006 7:37 AM

Watchedfolderfilter. Is there software (free or otherwise, but free is better :-) that will watch a folder and when a file appears in there, email it to a particular (always the same) recipient, then delete or move the original file? Oh, and for XP only, not OSX. Or is there a function of Thunderbird (preferred) or Outlook that does that?

Acrobat distiller does something similar, but its only for distilling .ps and .eps files into pdfs. Thats where the idea came from.

Basically, I receive faxes on my on my desktop PC (using Microsoft Fax). It works great in that I can choose which faxes to print (so I'm not printing the unsolicited stock tips and travel offers).

I'll be travelling for about 2 weeks next month and would like the faxes (which are small .tif's) emailed to me so I can keep up when Im away.

Forwarding to another fax number doesnt work because I wont be in the same place 2 days in a row.

Thanks in advance!

posted by sandra_s to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Don't know about a watched-folder solution, but you could forward your fax number to an eFax number to accomplish the same goal.
posted by jjg at 7:45 AM on July 25, 2006

It's not free, but watchDirectory will do exactly what you're asking for, and the evaluation version lasts 30 days which is long enough for you to use while you're travelling.
posted by Savvas at 8:32 AM on July 25, 2006

Might want to have a look at this question. Also Mach 5 Mailer has a free version.
posted by bigmusic at 12:49 PM on July 25, 2006

I don't think this would be too tricky to do with a batch script. It basically needs to do the following:

1) Check folder X for files.
2) If they exist, store the filenames in a comma-separated format (temporary file / variable)
3) Send an email via the command line with Blat, using the comma-separated list to tell Blat which attachments to send
3) Move the emailed files to a different ("sent") folder.

Run this batch script via Task Scheduleder every 30mins (or whatever) and you should be set.

But yeah, watchDirectory seems to do that automatically :)
posted by blag at 4:10 PM on July 25, 2006