Create files from template using flienames in a text document.

Question

Hi
I have been trying to wrap my head around this all evening and not gotten very far.  I have a template Word document that I need to copy and rename with pupils names.  I have the text document (.txt), with all the pupil names seperated into paragraphs.  I have to do this every term and end up typing all 200 pupils names in by hand.  I know there is a way do this with applescripts, but its not going well. Any and all help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Answer 1

That's pretty easy to do. This should get you close:
set the_template_file to (choose file with prompt "Select the template file:")
set the_name_list_file to (choose file with prompt "Select the file containing the names:")
set the_names_list to paragraphs of (read the_name_list_file)
tell application "Finder"
          repeat with each_name in the_names_list
                    set new_file to duplicate the_template_file
                    set name of new_file to each_name & ".docx"
          end repeat
end tell
The script will first ask you for the template file, then ask you for the file that contains the list of names.
It then loops through the list of names, for each name it duplicates the template file, then renames it to match the contents of the file.
There's no error checking here, so you might want to pad this script to catch errors, but it should be functional.