OS X Mavericks :: Using Automator To Delete Pesky Files
Jun 25, 2014
I'm required to use a remote management program, by my company, every time I want to remotely login into my business computer. What happens is that it downloads this file as a launcher in order to start my session. If I need to start a session 10 times a day....well you know what happens...I end up with 10 files on my desktop, which in turn creates clutter.Â
create a basic automator script that runs every night and deletes all of these files with the addendum at the end? For exampleÂ
file.dmg
file(1).dmg
file(2).dmg
file(3).dmg
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Apr 27, 2010
I'm new to the Mac world but have been successful in creating a few Automator workflows to simplify certain tasks. However, I'm stuck on the flowing; I'd like to create a workflow that searches a particular folder for items created 30 days before today's date and the delete them. I'm assuming I need to create a variable of today's date and then subtract 30 days from it and so on. Haven't been able to figure this out.
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Oct 1, 2009
I am new to Automator, and even though I have been tinkering around with it for about an hour, I can't seem to create an action.
What I want to do is have Automator automatically take the contents of a specific folder on my hard drive, print the contents of the folder (usually PDFs), then delete the files. I use dropbox, so when I place a pdf into this folder from my laptop on the go, it would be nice to come home to it printed, and no longer in the folder taking up space.
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Mar 8, 2009
Im new to the Mac operating system. I am proficient on a PC, but Macs have always captivated my attention. I finally gave into the Macbook. Anyways ---
The Automator application seems phenomenal in theory I just haven't learned all the ins and outs yet, but i see the concept that it was designed for (Jobs = Genius). Long story short I was streaming all of my music over from my PC and it got interrupted twice. I kept streaming to the same folder but it never prompted me to replace existing files of the same name. So I figured it would do it automatically. To my dismay that wasn't the case at all. I now have 9,000 songs and at least 4,000 of which are duplicates/Triplets. I wanted to know if there was some way to streamline the process of deleting and purging all these files out of my Music Folder/Itunes Library, Via the Automator program or any other program you know of.
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Jan 20, 2010
I move an action into the workflow space. Now, I realize that I made a mistake (God forbid) and I want to remove that action. PLEASE tell me how in the world do I do that. I click on the 'x' in the top right corner and nothing happens. I click on it and press delete key. Zilch. I even drag it to the trash (out of desperation). Perhaps my Automator.app is corrupt. I can't think of any other reason I'm not able to delete an action from the workflow. How do I reinstall in Snow Leopard? I can't using the install disk because Automator is not one of the apps designated. Can I download it (the app)? I seem to be the only person in the universe that has this problem (not being able to delete an action). I've googled my fingers raw.
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Mar 31, 2010
I managed to fumble my way through my first Automator actions today and after some trial and error, came up with a folder action that does exactly what I want, very simply to move music from my downloads folder to a different location. I also created an Automator application to do the same thing as I wasn't aware my folder action will now do this automatically (so cool). Here's my question: I have a few folder actions that were created during my trial and error process. Where are these and how do I delete/remove them? I did a Spotlight search and nothing came up.
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Jun 11, 2012
I created a folder action in Automator and can't find it to edit it or delete it. I've looked everywhere I could think of and ran a spotlight search but I can't find the .workflow document. All I want to do is delete the workflow.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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May 1, 2010
I've got at&t dsl and my old 2wire gateway went toes up. My new one (2Wire 2701 HG-B) came in the mail while I was at work and so my wife set it up. I'm not sure what she did but now I have a '2Wire DSL Setup Tool' icon on my desktop that I can't get rid of. It's one of those that looks like a white hard disk icon.
If I click on it a window comes up that says 2Wire Setup Tool and has the little Applications icon in it. If I click that then it warns me that it is an application downloaded off the Internet. It gives me 'go to web page', 'cancel', and 'open' options. If I click open then it just runs the tool, opens Safari and tells me everything is OK.
I've tried dragging the icon to the trash to eject but each time I start my MBP it shows up again with the same warning.
My 'show hard disks' option in Finder is unchecked.
I've gone into Applications and tried to rectify the problem there to no avail.
My Internet works fine, I'm just tired of this tool coming up every time I start my computer and giving me that warning about opening it.
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Jan 15, 2010
My daughter downloaded some things from the web and I was left with three icons on my desktop that will not go away. They are titled Panda 3D Runtime. When I try to dispose of them in the trashcan the trashcan refuses to accept them. When I look for more information on Panda 3D Runtime the gear in more info and preview just keep moving.
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Jun 5, 2014
I have a serverprogram from an external company that doesnt start after a restart of the mac that I run that server on. It starts the program but it doesnt start up the server of the program. All settings are right and I have consulted others with same config. After a restart the server turns up in the statusbar but as turned off. So I can go to the statusbar, click on the symbol and choose "start server".As I cant get the server to start up automaticly I was wondering if I can get the automator to start it up for me after a restart of the mac?Â
Macmini i5 Mavericks
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Jun 5, 2014
I'm trying to create a PDF from multiple images in automator. The PDF should contain:First Page: A contact sheet with all imagesFollowing pages: One page for each image
I don't even get the contact sheet working – it always results in a blank PDF.Â
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
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Sep 2, 2014
How would you use Automator and ical to send a monthly reminder email to a set of clients?I thought if I set up a message in automator to send a message, and an event that calls up automator workflow this would work,
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Aug 27, 2014
What I try to do is pick a photo from a defined folder ("gallery"), scale it and upload it to my Wordpress side. I automatically want to run this workflow every morning at a specific time so that the pictures changes everyday. It may sound strange that almost everything is done but two things are missing:Â
a) How do I tell Automator to use a random file from the "gallery" folder? How do I tell it to use the "gallery" folder in the first place?
b) How do I schedule that task? Is there a scheduler function somewhere that I missed?Â
Right now I use it manually as a service for images - that's why the first action is the copy action.Once the picture is scaled down to 230px and loaded into the folder "image_upload_temp" Hazel will take the file and upload it. I need to copy the file first to keep the original and scale a copy and then move it to the target folder because Hazel shall not upload the unscaled but only the scaled version.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 15", 8GB
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Jun 21, 2014
I have been using a Mac for a good 8 years now and I'm a happy user. I recently found out about Automator ('hey what is this little robot for?') and what it can do, yet I lack the knowledge of finding out what I must do to make a script to perform the following thing:  When I launch an app (FL Studio), I want the box checked next to 'Use F1 and F2 as standard function keys' in the Keyboard preferences pane in the System Preferences app. When I close the same app (FL Studio), I want the box unchecked next to 'Use F1 and F2 as standard function keys' in the Keyboard preference pane in the System Preferences app. Â
I have found several other topics about this subject, however, those were about scripts when logging in to your computer, and not upon opening/closing an app. Please note that I am seeking for the setting to be changed when the app is opened and closed.
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Mar 13, 2010
I have a long list of files to unrar (I use unarchive).
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Apr 22, 2010
I am completely new to using Automator so I'm sure I've missed something very basic.
I created an action to automatically move music I download from a music site from the Downloads folder into the folder I want them in so I don't have to do it manually.
Problem is, the action moves everything that gets downloaded into the Downloads folder. What do I need to do to have only music files moved, leaving any other file type alone?
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Jun 25, 2014
I've set up an Automator to batch rename files. The renaming works fine. The problem arises when it renames a file which doesn't contain it's extension (a common MacOS practice). Is there some way to make sure it preserves the filetype? For instance, this works fine:Â
Original:
Output:
 And this results in an error:Â
Original:
Output (file type has been replaced with generic "document" type)
Automator logic, can be viewed here.
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Jan 3, 2011
Unlike Windows, this damn-ded MacOS X won't ask what to do when moving several items with the same name to a single location. In Vista and 7, it asks if you want to replace all similarly named items with a single of the items or if you want to put all of the similarly named items in the new location and append an annotation at the end of the file name. (I think Windows appends "Copy #" to duplicates) So, I'm left with, "File, File 2, File 3, file 4" in a single folder. I need an Automator action to sort this out and simply move or delete the duplicates.
The simplest action I can think is: Ask for files>get files>select files with similar filenames, neglecting the last characters if they are numerals>reference the size (with accuracy of 1 byte) of selected files>label files of the same size red>select red files>move red files to a selected folder. How can I get these sort of tools? I need a measuring action and another action that will compare file names...
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Mar 11, 2012
I'm trying to create an Automator service for the Finder in Lion. It gives me an "error in shell script". I just created a similar script that uses "imguru" to upload images to [URL] which works great, so i'm thinking that it's must be the line with "unzip" that creates a problem.Â
Info:
MBP late 2009
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Aug 26, 2007
I'm attempting to use Automator to rename picture files. I select "Make Sequential" and put the name in that I want. However, once everything is completed my pictures are not in the same order they were out of the camera. I like how my camera imports the photos in the order that I took them. Now when I look through my pictures my vacation is completely out of chronological order. How do can I set Automator so that this does not happen in the future?
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Dec 28, 2009
Is it possible to write a workflow that can select files that are contained inside a folder package?
I am trying to automate a file copy of VMWare fusion 3 files to a windows machine on the network but I cannot seem to get any of the finder actions to give me an option to get inside the package.
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Aug 7, 2010
I have a collection of .htm files saved onto my Mac hard drive. I want to convert them to .jpg files--all at once. I found a Windows program that could do it, but when it converted them, it would not retain the original file names. It gave them a sequential file name, i.e. _1.jpg, _2.jpg, _3.jpg ~ _263.jpg. There is no option to retain the original file names...:/
EDIT: (i.e. marketingtable.htm > marketingtable.jpg)
So my question is, is there an Automator process that could batch convert .htm files to .jpg? Or is there an app for Mac that can batch convert .htm files to image (.jpg) files?
I usually am able to find the answer to all my questions with Google, and this time I thought I had as well with the Windows app, but it brought upon too much of a feat for me to handle.
(Also, if there's an Automator process to batch rename files using a .txt file as a reference for the new names of the files, that'd be awesome as well.
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Mar 6, 2012
I have been using Automator to import hundreds of text files into one excel workbook using the "Import Text files to Excel Workbook" action. Automator works great for all files that are tab delimited. However I have another set of data that are output with a varying amount of spaces between each column. I cannot change the way they are output.
Automator gives me the option of choosing "space" as a delimiter, but it wont give me the option to "Treat consecutive delimiters as one" that Import within excel does. I also tried to record my actions within excel many times but it didn't work even with just one file. So what I need is a way to get these text files into one excel workbook as separate worksheets with the data separated correctly into columns.
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Mar 12, 2012
I have created a simple Automator action which says 'when files are added to folder Dropbox>Camera Uploads, import them to iPhoto'.The problem is that as the files are added to Dropbox one at a time (by the Dropbox servers, after they are taken on my Android phone and the Dropbox app auto-uploads them), this means there is a gap of 30-60 secs between photos, and more for a video. The end result therefore is iPhoto has each photo imported as a separate 'Event', rather than all the photos imported as one event.Â
What I'd like to say is 'wait for 5 minutes after the most recent photo/video was added, before importing all the photos/videos just added in that batch'. That way instead of iPhoto receiving each file one at a time and importing them separately, Automater will wait until the folder falls silent, indicating the import from the phone has finished, and only then will it import all the photos taken as one event.Â
Info:
Macbook Pro, 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM, 450GB HD
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Apr 11, 2012
Actually in the files i am trying to rename the first 2 digits are numbers then space and then there is the file name i want to use.
Info:
Automator, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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May 8, 2012
I've able to get an automator service to rename a bunch of files exactly the way I want by having it "Copy Finder Items" and then Make Finder Items Sequential". But it then dumps all the renamed files on the desktop.How do I add an option for it to either create a folder to put it in or dump the files into a pre-existing folder?
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Jun 21, 2012
I'm kind of new to Automator and I'm trying to come up with a sequence that will severely save me a few hours a day moving files from two larger folders into smaller folders. Basically the setup is that I have two folders, one constantly being populated with images and the other with video files. They each have file names starting with a two digit number (i.e. 12, 11, 10...) or "BG" and then a two digit number (i.e. BG12, BG11, BG10...) with the digits corresponding to a year. Essentially, I'd need to move the files into folders corresponding to the year (i.e. files starting with BG12 and 12 would be moved to 2012, files starting with BG11 and 11 would be moved to 2011, etc). As it stands now, I've only been able to get the 2012 folder populated.
Info:
Automator, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Aug 27, 2010
I've been scouring Google for an Automator action that will allow me to drop .doc or .docx files into a directory and convert them to .odt, but so far I've had no luck. Can this easily be done or does it require a lot of programming knowledge to pull off? I really hope someone can help as this is a repetitive task that would save me a great deal of time.
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May 18, 2012
I am trying to set up a folder action to do the following... When a file is added to the "images" folder a new dated subfolder would automatically be created, and the file would be moved to this new dated subfolder.Â
Here's what I have so far (which I'm sure is way off base)Â
1) Folder action receives files and folders added to "Images"
2) Filter finder items - Find files where ALL of the following is true: Kind is ANY
3) New Folder - Name is "_" Where: "Images"
4) Add Date or Time to Finder Item Names: Add Date to folder name
5) Move Finder Items: This is the step that I'm stuck on. I don't know how indicate the newly created folder in step 3Â
Another question I have is how to make automator check to see if there's already a subfolder with the current date and put the file in that subfolder instead of creating a new subfolder with a duplicate name.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jun 12, 2012
I have set up an automator service that TAR's a folder into an archive for me and it works quite nicely. Idealy however, I would like to be able to highlight several folders, right click and have automator tar each folder into it's own TAR archive, but do it one by one. Â
[Code]...
I'm not 100% sure so I guess it would be a good time to verify, is there a problem with having the system try to TAR multiple folders at one time? If it is not a problem then I guess this discussion itself is pointless and I can simple right click on each folder and select "TAR Folder" and just wait until they're all finished. I would think that it would be ideal for the system to do each one individually and not try to do them all at one time.Â
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