Apple® Automator with AppleScript® Bible

Chapter 15. Ten Automation Projects for Files and Folders

IN THIS CHAPTER

• The projects

• Creating a basic workflow to process specific files

• Converting basic flow to accept any files

• Finding files and folders and renaming them

• Finding files and folders and trashing them

• Creating aliases for files and folders

• Filtering Finder items

• Connecting to a server

• Getting folder contents

• Opening files with the proper application

• Setting Spotlight comments for files and folders

Welcome to Part III of this Bible, in which you get down to the basics of creating automation projects. In this and upcoming chapters, you're going to walk through a total of fifty automation projects. All of them will feature heavy use of Automator, most of them will also include advanced automation by using AppleScript or shell scripting, and some will feature AppleScript-only alternatives.

In this first chapter, you'll learn how to automate work that is centered on files and folders. All the projects in this section focus on making you productive in this specific area. In some cases, you'll find that what you're learning has already been covered in previous chapters, but that's okay: remember, the chapters in Part 4 are all about practical know-how.

The Projects

All of the projects in this chapter will focus on one area: files and folders. Working with files and folders is part of the standard Workflow choice on the welcome screen, as seen in Figure 15.1.

Working with files and folders is a large part of the work that you do in AppleScript, ...