[kman42]

It took a few days for me to warm up to Automator, but so far I have done two really nifty things with it. One only took two actions and the other only took 3 or 4.

1) Add Spotlight comments...: Action 1: Get selected Finder items; Action 2: Add Spotlight Comments to Selected Finder Items (show action when run). This is a great little script for letting Spotlight know that items belong to a similar group or project. I deal with DNA sequences all day and most of them are organized by the folders they are in rather than by their names. Now I can just give them all a comment with the name of the project and they will always be found by Spotlight.

2) I needed to download subset of a bunch of tiffs from a website mixed in with the same pics that were posted as gifs. I selected the linked images from Safari and then filtered them by 'tiff' and downloaded them all to a folder and then renamed them. I downloaded 51 images and renamed them just like that without downloading all the other images I didn't want. Nifty.

What have you used it for?

kman

[speedballs]

I want to find a way to make a new smart playlist for every artist I add, but I haven't found a way, and I'm too damn lazy to do it myself.

[ntt]

I've used it to work around the fact that iPhoto '04 doesn't work with Spotlight.
I made an automator action that syncs the iPhoto titles and comments into the finder spotlight comments for the photos themselves. Neat.

I've also used it to make a workflow that zips up the source code for an app and emails it to the people I'm developing it for.

[MartiNZ]

I wasn't sure about it to begin with, but then along came a perfect opportunity to use it:
I had some movies from my digital camera, in iPhoto, that were taken in portrait, if you will. I was never sure if there was an easy way to rotate them, but what I ended up doing was:
- register QuickTime 7 Pro
- open .avi and export to image sequence
- select image sequence in Finder and create workflow
- set to rotate files right

For one of the movies, only 40 seconds long, it made a 1176 file long image sequence, so the workflow took rather a while and pretty much locked up Finder, but it was well worth it as a way of getting to like Automator .

Of course I then also had to work out how to add the sound back to the rotated movie, having not used QT Pro features before ... wasn't too hard though. I was pleased overall.

How do you add workflows to the contextual menu from Finder?

[azdude]

All I've done is add to the contextual menu two simple Plug-ins I've made, fulfilling a Finder wish I've had for a long time:

1) Mail These Items to...

and

2) Zip These Items and Mail to...

[dfbennett]

azdude,
i like that idea.
Care to share?

[LeeG]

Wow, I was really thinking I wouldn't use automator, but those are some sweet ideas. Definitely want the "mail this to..." and the spotlight comments additions is perfect. Can you add an automator action to a folder (like applescript folder actions)?

It would be nice to have a folder that when you filed something in it, it automatically added a spotlight comment into metadata, sort of mindlessly adds a level of depth to finding something with spotlight.

Each project could have its own folder action, so every file you put in that folder is automatically spotlight associated with the project....

L

[kman42]

To make a finder plug-in just Save as... and select plug-in as the format and then Finder as the application.

[kman42]

Originally Posted by LeeG

Wow, I was really thinking I wouldn't use automator, but those are some sweet ideas. Definitely want the "mail this to..." and the spotlight comments additions is perfect. Can you add an automator action to a folder (like applescript folder actions)?

It would be nice to have a folder that when you filed something in it, it automatically added a spotlight comment into metadata, sort of mindlessly adds a level of depth to finding something with spotlight.

Each project could have its own folder action, so every file you put in that folder is automatically spotlight associated with the project....

L

That's even better than my workflow. I always organize my files by project so anytime something is put into that folder I would like to have the name of the folder added to the Spotlight comments of the file being added. Shouldn't be hard.

Yes, you can save them as folder actions. Just select it as the format. Easy as pie. I'm going to work on your suggestion.

kman

[kman42]

Well, now that I look at it, it doesn't appear that the "Add to Spotlight comments" action can take a comment as input. You either have to specify it or put up a dialog. You could modify it for each folder initially, but it would have been nice if they would have thought of this one.

kman

[kman42]

I can't figure it out. There doesn't seem to be a way to select the item you dropped into the folder. When you drop a file into a folder it doesn't remain selected once it is in the destination. The only way to 'get' a file is to have it be selected in the Finder and once you drop it in the folder it to trigger the action then it is no longer selected. This one might require some more freeform applescript.

[torifile]

I'd like to get flagged messages and make iCal todos for follow-up. Is that possible? I was able to duplicate the Mail Items... finder plug-in and that was great. Now I'm looking for ways to improve my workflow even more. Any ideas?

[azdude]

Originally Posted by dfbennett

azdude,
i like that idea.
Care to share?

Sure... They're simple:

1) Mail These Items To:

->Get Selected Finder Items...
->New Mail Message

2) Zip and Mail These Items To:

->Get Selected Finder Items...
->Create Archive (Files.zip, on the desktop, for me)
->New Mail Message
(Not sure why, but the following two don't work yet)
->Find Finder Items... on Desktop... whose file name is Files.zip
->Move to Trash

Save EACH as a Plug-in with finder as the application, and they'll show up in all finder contextual menus.

[dfbennett]

very cool azdude, I had no trouble getting them setup.
Seems like automator can do some very cool things, I just need to think of them

[PurpleGiant]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

I wasn't sure about it to begin with, but then along came a perfect opportunity to use it:
I had some movies from my digital camera, in iPhoto, that were taken in portrait, if you will. I was never sure if there was an easy way to rotate them, but what I ended up doing was:
- register QuickTime 7 Pro
- open .avi and export to image sequence
- select image sequence in Finder and create workflow
- set to rotate files right

For one of the movies, only 40 seconds long, it made a 1176 file long image sequence, so the workflow took rather a while and pretty much locked up Finder, but it was well worth it as a way of getting to like Automator .

Of course I then also had to work out how to add the sound back to the rotated movie, having not used QT Pro features before ... wasn't too hard though. I was pleased overall.

How do you add workflows to the contextual menu from Finder?

Cool, but you do realise that Quicktime Player can rotate movies by itself though? Look under the movie properties (cmd-J) > Video Track > Size.

[kilechki]

Automator is nice, but it lacks two important features in my opinion : it cannot create neither PDFs nor Webarchives. This is actually very sad : I had planned to use Automator to archive different kinds of document on the web and "spotlight" them on the fly in order to get them in smart folder without worrying on their actual location. I can do that second part, but only with plain HTML or simple text. Sad. I can't understand how they did not implement a way to generate PDF just like in print dialogs.

Speaking of Automator, I hope it won't kill Apple's desire to reduce the gap between the internet and our hard drives. I had hoped, even before the first beta of Tiger, that Safari could give the option to assign a "genre" and a rating to each bookmark, exactly like in iTunes. This way, all sites tagged "school" or "finance" could be handled following the attributes of that genre : for instance, they would be tagged with those keywords, downloaded in a specific folder and Spotlight could eventually allow a much better tuning of search results. For the timebeing, I find Spotlight to be a little weak in this regard.

[kman42]

For Automator to be able to create workflows that work as folder actions, it is necessary to have a "Select dropped items" action. I looked around and couldn't find one, but this seems like an incredibly basic action to make it possible to work with the items dropped into the folder. Any applescripters out there want to whip this up? I don't think it should be too hard.

kman

[CaptainHaddock]

Ultimately, there should be actions associated with every print-capable application to save a PDF. I strongly suggest giving Apple your Automator suggestions, as I've already done.

Also, it's almost certainly possible to make an Applescript that creates PDFs, and then to call that script from Automator.

By the way, has anyone been able to use Pages in Automator? I don't see it listed there.

[MartiNZ]

Originally Posted by PurpleGiant

Cool, but you do realise that Quicktime Player can rotate movies by itself though? Look under the movie properties (cmd-J) > Video Track > Size.

Umm, ahh... no, didn't know that . At least tell me you have to have pro to do that? Please .

Oh well, I guess I'll have to find something else to use Automator for... and get rid of the plugin I saved as I won't be needing it.

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock

Ultimately, there should be actions associated with every print-capable application to save a PDF. I strongly suggest giving Apple your Automator suggestions, as I've already done.

Also, it's almost certainly possible to make an Applescript that creates PDFs, and then to call that script from Automator.

By the way, has anyone been able to use Pages in Automator? I don't see it listed there.

PDF creation is the one glaring hole with the default Actions that shipped with Automator. I think we can look forward to lots of third parties filling the gap.

[malique]

Anyone can help me with this, I lost the first battle against automator � :-/

If anyone has WarCraft III, maybe you can help me out:

I applescripted (till now) that the WarCraft.iso which I made to keep my CD-ROM quiet is mounted and then the game is loaded off my HD. Unfortunately I am really NOT skilled in Applescript and this script makes a new error since Tiger: APPLE EVENT TIMED OUT. Whysoever.

I thought: Ok, let's try automator � I did, but I couldn't get it to work. There is an option �mount image� but I didn't get it to mount my .iso � is the imagename supposed to be before or after the mount-imgae-command?

Can someone light my way?

My goal is: in the End I want to have one nice iconin the dock which is my batch process. first mounting the discimage, then starting the game app and quit itself if necessary.

[CaptainHaddock]

Malique, I don't have an ISO to try out myself, but would this workflow do the trick?

1. Get Specified Finder Items (add the disk image file here)
2. Mount Disk Image
3. Launch Application (choose Warcraft III from the list)

[dillerX]

I made one that I can take photos from a camera to, adds our copyright info, watermark, resizes, auto colors and prepares them for the web with a save.

Next is triggering them to upload themselves to the correct spot on the server

Working on another that takes those images and puts them into a generic table layout for a web page that I can make a php include page for an online photo gallery.

Automator rocks my nuts.

[d.fine]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

How do you add workflows to the contextual menu from Finder?

I think this is what you mean : when you have created a workflow do File>Save As Plugin...
then select it to be a plugin for Finder. When you control-click a file, in the menu under Automator should be the name which you gave to the plugin/workflow...

[CaptainHaddock]

Automator rocks my nuts.

Take that, Windows!

[von Wrangell]

I'm wondering if you could help me with a certain thing I want to be able to do. I dl all my stuff into one folder and every now and then go through it to trash what I don't need. The next step is what I'm wondering if you could help me with. Is it possible to create a workflow(don't know if that's the term, I'm that clueless) that would move all the movies in that folder to the Movies folder, the documents to the Documents folder and so on?

Any suggestions?

[Catfish_Man]

Anyone want to write me svn equivalents of the cvs automator actions?

[Thorin]

Originally Posted by kman42

For Automator to be able to create workflows that work as folder actions, it is necessary to have a "Select dropped items" action. I looked around and couldn't find one, but this seems like an incredibly basic action to make it possible to work with the items dropped into the folder. Any applescripters out there want to whip this up? I don't think it should be too hard.

kman

Automator already does that. Just create a new workflow that starts with an action that takes finder files/folders and save it as a folder plug-in action, attach it to a folder, and drag something into the folder, it's working great for me with spotlight comments..

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Originally Posted by dillerX

Automator rocks my nuts.

I just might need to use that as the new slogan for my site
btw- the workflows you're working on sound great, i'd love to host them.

[typoon]

I've actually created 2 of them. 1 was for my work which will help people setup their Mail.app. They will just need to enter the info and it set up an account for them. the second I created was an action to move widgets to the ~/Library/Widgets folder since some of the ones you download don't move them there automatically.

[Thorin]

I've created a finder plug-in workflow, which is

Get Selected Finder Items -> Get Folder Contents (Repeat for each subfolder found) -> Add Spotlight Comments to Finder Items (Show Action When Run)

Problem is when I run it it doesn't seem to apply the comment I specify to everything. I've run it on a folder which contains a smallish group of files (less than 50) and a couple of sub folders (which only contain maybe 20 files between them). For some reason it's not adding the comment to at least one of the files. To start with it was a Keynote presentation and an omni outliner file (although there was another outliner file in the folder that it was being applied to), and now it's just the omni outliner file. I can add the comment manually, and if I drag it into a folder with a finder action attached it adds the comment fine.

Any ideas what's going on here, is this an automator bug, or is it something I'm doing?

[mism]

I was trying to do the following:

"copy current URL in safari and paste into new mail message"

and

"copy selected text and paste into new mail message"


I can do it all (copy, new mail message) but can't work out the paste part?

I am going to set up some simple contextual menu workflows for 'move the selected file to X'. I tend to download to one folder, from there I will be able to easily move a file to 'movies' or 'widgets' for example.

[kman42]

Originally Posted by Thorin

Automator already does that. Just create a new workflow that starts with an action that takes finder files/folders and save it as a folder plug-in action, attach it to a folder, and drag something into the folder, it's working great for me with spotlight comments..

I can't get this to work. I did the following two part action workflow which seems to be exactly what you described:

1) Get Selected Finder Items
2) Add Sportlight Comments to Finder Items

I saved it as a folder action and attached it to a folder. I drag items into the folder and the workflow runs (I can see it in the menu bar), but when I check the spotlight comments there is nothing there.

What did you do differently? This would be a very useful workflow for me so I would love to get it working.

thanks,
kman

[kman42]

Originally Posted by kman42

I can't get this to work. I did the following two part action workflow which seems to be exactly what you described:

1) Get Selected Finder Items
2) Add Sportlight Comments to Finder Items

I saved it as a folder action and attached it to a folder. I drag items into the folder and the workflow runs (I can see it in the menu bar), but when I check the spotlight comments there is nothing there.

What did you do differently? This would be a very useful workflow for me so I would love to get it working.

thanks,
kman

Okay, I got it. You can't use the "Get Selected Finder Items" action, you have to use the "Get Specified Finder Items" action. This seems a little odd as this latter action appears to be more for specifying the actions at the time the script is written or for bringing up an open dialog, whereas the former action seems like it should take the selected items. After looking at how the Finder works it is clear that dragged items do not remain selected after they are dropped into a new folder so the latter action wouldn't really fit. But there is nothing in automator to indicate that "Get Specified Finder Items" takes items dragged into a folder action as 'specified'.

Anyway, cool it works!

kman

[LeeG]

Nice work!

Does the action ask for the comments in a dialog box, or does the comment have to be coded into the action?

And can I have a copy?


Thanks,

Lee

[Thorin]

The workflow I have attached as a folder action just uses the "Add Spotlight Comments to Finder Items" action and nothing else at all. The folder action must pass it whatever's been copied into the folder by default.

[Thorin]

Originally Posted by LeeG

Nice work!

Does the action ask for the comments in a dialog box, or does the comment have to be coded into the action?

And can I have a copy?


Thanks,

Lee

You can set it up either way. Mine's coded in, but you just have to click a checkbox to toggle between that and it asking you.

[DanMacMan]

Has anybody made an Automater Workflow for opening the Quartz Debugger and enabling Q2DX upon login? If so, post it!

[kman42]

Originally Posted by Thorin

The workflow I have attached as a folder action just uses the "Add Spotlight Comments to Finder Items" action and nothing else at all. The folder action must pass it whatever's been copied into the folder by default.

Even easier! Apparently, some actions can take the dropped items as input and others can't.

LeeG--I'm not going to bother posting the workflow as it is only a single action (using Thorin's method). Just create a new workflow, drag in the "Add Spotlight Comments to Finder Items", and then save it as a folder action and tell it which folder to attach to. Couldn't be simpler. As thorin mentioned, you can hard code the comment or tell it to "Show action when run" under 'option'.

kman

[PurpleGiant]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

Umm, ahh... no, didn't know that . At least tell me you have to have pro to do that? Please .

Oh well, I guess I'll have to find something else to use Automator for... and get rid of the plugin I saved as I won't be needing it.

S'ok. Most people miss it. It's very well hidden.

And yes, you need pro for it. Your registration didn't go to waste

[Busemann]

Originally Posted by speedballs

I want to find a way to make a new smart playlist for every artist I add, but I haven't found a way, and I'm too damn lazy to do it myself.

Easy:

1. Hit the browse button
2. There is no step 2

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Here's a few good examples of Spotlight workflows: http://www.automatorworld.com/category/spotlight/
It is important to make sure that if you're intending a workflow to be either a folder action or a plug-in, that the initial "get" is correct.

[Goldfinger]

I would really like to able to ad the comments that I have attached to my pictures in iView Media Pro to the spotlight comments. I know that iView is Apple Script aware but I have no idea on how to do this. Sad

[Hugi]

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man

Anyone want to write me svn equivalents of the cvs automator actions?

I'll take one of those aws well, please.

[dillerX]

Originally Posted by Silky Voice of The Gorn

I just might need to use that as the new slogan for my site
btw- the workflows you're working on sound great, i'd love to host them.

Go ahead and use it.

The workflows are really quite simple. For the most part the big one just triggers photoshop actions. That one is pretty custom to my situation.

The other ones will be more open, i'll have to send them your way if I get them to actually work right.

[xMetal]

Automator is very cool, but it needs SO many more options in it's actions. There just so many things I've thought of to do that I don't haev the options for.

For example, I wanted to make a simple backup routine. I want it to:

- look at my Documents folder
- Get the list of all folders (i.e. each work project is in a folder)
- get the folders that have been modified today
- copy those to another drive, replacing any existing folders of the same name

There's options for doing this with *files*, but you can't filter out only folders that have been modified today, and since I have a mirrored copy of all my project folders on the other drive, I just want it to take the folders modified today and copy them, replacing the old ones. It won't really work if you start just copying inidividual files.

I'm sure this will improve with time, but in many cases just a teeny bit more flexibility and you could do so many more things.

[dillerX]

Originally Posted by xMetal

Automator is very cool, but it needs SO many more options in it's actions. There just so many things I've thought of to do that I don't haev the options for.

For example, I wanted to make a simple backup routine. I want it to:

- look at my Documents folder
- Get the list of all folders (i.e. each work project is in a folder)
- get the folders that have been modified today
- copy those to another drive, replacing any existing folders of the same name

There's options for doing this with *files*, but you can't filter out only folders that have been modified today, and since I have a mirrored copy of all my project folders on the other drive, I just want it to take the folders modified today and copy them, replacing the old ones. It won't really work if you start just copying inidividual files.

I'm sure this will improve with time, but in many cases just a teeny bit more flexibility and you could do so many more things.

You can make scripts that do virtually anything with Xcode 2 tools.

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/automator.html

[CaptainHaddock]

I dl all my stuff into one folder and every now and then go through it to trash what I don't need. The next step is what I'm wondering if you could help me with. Is it possible to create a workflow(don't know if that's the term, I'm that clueless) that would move all the movies in that folder to the Movies folder, the documents to the Documents folder and so on?

Von Wrangell, I came up with this:

1. Get Selected Finder Items
2. Get Folder Contents
3. Filter Finder Items -> Whose Name Extension is equal to mov
4. Move Finder Items -> to Movies

You could run something like that on a folder. The only problem I see is getting it to loop and do multiple types of files; maybe adding another "get folder contents" will work. I'll tinker some more.

[kman42]

I have been getting much use out of my "Add Spotlight Comments..." workflow (finder plug-in), but I would like to make another one called "Add Spotlight Comments -R..." which performs this recursively. I ran across the option in "Get Folder Contents" to get the contents recursively, but the problem is that it doesn't get the folders themselves only the contents. I would like to add the comments to the folders as well as the contents so this isn't quite working. Anyone have any ideas?

kman

[MartiNZ]

Originally Posted by PurpleGiant

S'ok. Most people miss it. It's very well hidden.

And yes, you need pro for it. Your registration didn't go to waste

Heh, cheers. I'll have to get into using it for such things more often .