Automator 2-Add Spotlight Comments still dead?

After the latest update, I was hoping that this Action would have been fixed. When creating a Workflow, adding Spotlight Comments works fine. However, save as a plugin or application and its dead.
Is it me, or is this still a bug after the latest update?

I use this more than any other Action because my entire Archive is rooted in the Spotlight reference process.
I was given a possibility in another post to not use "Get Selected Finder Items" and then it would work. Which, to me, is counter to proper usage, especially in regard to how it worked in Automator 1. So I am considering this a "bug" in Automator until they fix it.

Similar Messages

  • Problem with add Spotlight Comments script.

    Hello,
    I am trying to add Spotlight Comments to some files using Automator. I have made an very simple script in Automator that add Spotlight Comments to the files that I have selected in Finder. I save this script as an app and it work great. I also save the same script but not as an app but as a service. The problem here is that when I run the service it add the same Spotlight Comment two times. For example, if I add "@Webshots" with the app the Spotlight Comments of the files is "@Webshots" but when I do it with the service the Spotlight Comments of the files is "@Webshots" "@Webshots". Can anybody help me with this? I will appreciate it a lot any help that you could give me. Thanks

    I suspect your workflow includes 'get select finder items' as the first action. get rid of it. it's redundant in a service that accepts files and folder in finder. that's why everything happens twice.

  • Add Spotlight Comment from file?

    As I understand the way the *Add Spotlight Comments* works, the input is the file (or set of files) to be modified, and the added comments can either come statically from the workflow, or as user input if the workflow permits *Show Action When Run*.
    I have a moderately ugly shell script that downloads and examines a succession of files and builds a description (just a few dozen words) that I want to add automatically to those comments. At the end of my script, I've downloaded the file, and stored the comments I want in a separate temp file.
    As far as I can see, Automator can't do this: I can't specify a file as the incoming source of those new Spotlight Comments, can I?
    Assuming the answer is negative, two quick non-Automator followups:
    1) Is there any shell-script level Unix command that can manipulate the comments (without trying to hack into the .DS_Store files, that is).
    2) Can Applescript do this? And, crucially, where's the best current help for Applescript for someone that hasn't touched it in many years?

    Automator can do it, although some of the actions may not be obvious. Text (for example, the results of your ugly shell script) can be placed into a variable for later use, but you can also get it from a file. If your description/comment is in a plain text file, you can use the Combine Text Files action to get the text, then place it in a variable that can be used with the Set Spotlight Comments for Finder Items action.
    Example:
    1) Get Specified Finder Items (add your description file) (ignore input)
    2) Combine Text Files
    3) Set Value of Variable {Variable: whatever}
    4) Get Specified Finder Items (add the file you want to comment) (ignore input)
    5) Set Spotlight Comments for Finder Items {drag variable whatever to the text field, Append to existing comments}

  • How to add spotlight comment on more than one file simultaneously?

    Hi
    how can I add spotlight comment on some files in mountain lion ?
    it's very useful and necessary specially when I want to add some comments on many files or photos that newly importet.
    is there any way in OS X  for that?
    Thank you!
    Safa

    Automator workflow of the month: Add Spotlight comments

  • Automator doubling my Spotlight comment text

    I made a simple workflow to add text to the Spotlight comments field using "Get Selected Finder Items" and "Set Spotlight Comments for Finder Items" but when I use it, the text I enter is entered twice in the Spotlight field. What am I doing wrong here or is this a bug?
    Thanks,
    Edward

    Are those the only actions in the workflow? If you are doing something like using this as a Service, the workflow is automatically passed the selected items, so adding another action to get the selection will double up the items.
    Also note that this is the Tiger Automator forum - Automator in *Snow Leopard* is quite a bit different, so future questions should be posted in the Snow Leopard forum.

  • Automator for Exporting Spotlight Comments?

    Hello,
    I have around 700 historic photos that have been digitized. All the photo details (dates, etc.) were entered into the Spotlight Comments field under Get Info. Unfortunately, none of the comments appear when I open the photos in Adobe Bridge CS4. Is there an easy solution (perhaps an Automator script) to export the Spotlight Comments and use them elsewhere?
    Thank you,
    Brian

    Brian
    If I read you right, what you are trying to do is grab Finder metadata and convert it to photo metadata. Specifically, convert spotlight comments to Exif and IPTC - which is what a Photo app will need.
    You can't do this with Automator. The Automator dictionary has ways to set Spotlight Comments but I can see no way to get them. Further the dictionary has the ability to write to the IPTC data only of images in Aperture, not in the Finder or iPhoto.
    You might do better with that question on the Automator forum here:
    http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1261
    Have you tried the Applescript that was suggested when you posted the query last?
    As your target are file managed by Bridge, give the Adobe forums a go too.
    However, you may run into another issue here and that is that most scanners (as I presume this is how the photos were digitised) do not create Exif and IPTC data for scanned images. It may not be possible to do what you want to do.
    Regards
    TD

  • Collections in finder, quick add to spotlight comments

    I'm wanting to optimize the way I'm using spotlight, and know that there's a field for spotlight comments when you select and item in finder and command-i... I'm wondering if there's a keyboard shortcut that can let me add spotlight comments directly, or is there a Quicksilver plug-in that might let me do that?
    Also, within spotlight is there a way to configure it so that the first (or only) items to come up are the ones that I've added the relevant spotlight comments to?
    Basically what I'm wanting to do is to add the metadata that would effectively make collections like in Yojimbo or Notemind... I love Yojimbo's idea, but I don't want a separate database for all my yojimbo collections... I don't want to be bound to Yojimbo and don't want it always running in the background... the finder is already a fabulous database, and between QS and spotlight you can do a million more things than Yojimbo can let me do... so I would love to get this "collections" effect inside finder without making a million aliases for my files...
    Any suggestions?

    Let me start with the "easy" question first: the .DS_Store files are where "Finder information" is stored. Windows users find these things a pain in neck, and usually insist they be deleted. Most of time this isn't a problem, the Mac users just get annoyed when their folder doesn't open the way it was when last closed--the principle information stored there is the view the folder was told to keep, the size of the icons and their arrangement, and so on. Every time you open a folder a .DS_Store file created if one does not already exist, and if one does the file will be updated if you change your settings for the folder, for instance switch it to List view, tell it to always open in List view, with columns for Date Modified, Size, but not Kind or Date Created. And it also keeps the information entered in Spotlight Comments. Just how Finder preserves this information if a file is moved, in Mac OS, to another folder, I don't know. But it does.
    What we REALLY need is a nice little program to write to the metadata of the file. For instance, Spotlight will index keywords, which are stored in the file itself, as part of the file's metadata. I mainly work with graphics, and Photoshop allows you to add keywords to the file's metadata. Apple's iPhoto and Aperture will also add keywords, but they are not written to a file's metadata until you export them. PDFs can also have keywords assigned, you can even do it with Preview. Text documents can also have keywords added using some (most?) text editors, including TextEdit (provided the file is in RTF format). The nice thing about keyword metadata is that it goes with the file, and be accessed in any OS that allows a metadata search.
    Unfortunately I don't know of any program that would allow you to select a batch of miscellaneous files and add the same keyword to all of them. It would certainly be handy though.
    Francine
    Francine
    Schwieder

  • Spotlight Comment Missing, But Smart Folders Still Work

    I have entered a lot of spotlight comments on files. On about several 100 off them, Apple Command i does not show any spotlight comments. Its not likely that I erased or failed to "save" several 100, say about 600 out of 900 files. I know for a fact that I entered spotlight comments on nearly all of my photo files. For some reason, the smart folders that look for spotlight comments still return the files.
    I shut down and rebooted. Still no change. For some reason, I cannot find the way to edit the search criteria in smart folders.
    Any ideas?

    Well, this is proving to be a tough case. I rebooted with Option, Command P and R, and then rebooted in safe mode and ran disk utility, both verify permissions and check volume on both the upper level drive (the one that has a technical name) and the named volume (the one that has a user-assigned name). I hate to say this, but nothing has changed. <darn>.
    I am kind of thinking about paying Apple to furnish and install an upgrade to my OS from 10.4 to 10.6 but am reluctant because of persistent reports that the newer OS has driver problems with Epson photo printers, and other issues with Adobe LightRoom which is a critical app for me.
    I did search the forum to see if anybody else has the same kind of problem but did not find anything. It generous of you to offer your expertise, so I hate to keep coming back.
    Anyway, is there another approach that I could look into?
    Thanks!

  • How-to: add spotlight tags when printing to PDF

    Hello,
    I have an extensive knowledge base of articles that I store in one central folder. I would like to have the option of adding (predefined) spotlight tags in the process of doing this, so as to be able to use smartfolders in my knowlegde base to sort information.
    Any ideas ?
    Thanks,
    Serge

    The system automatically indexes the contents of the files for Spotlight use. The Spotlight comments you add are just extra info that wouldn't necessarily be found within the document. You can already use smart folders.
    If you really want to add Spotlight comments using Automator, you can make use of the Finder action "Add Spotlight Comments to Finder Items".
    If you want to find all actions in Automator having to do with Spotlight, just start typing "Spotlight" in the search field above Automator's actions. You may have to show the toolbar to see the search field, either with the View menu or using the button in the upper right corner of an Automator window.
    MacBook 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   512 MB RAM

  • Spotlight Comments for All Users

    Hello.
    I have been trying to allow users to add spolight comments to files on a server. It seems that only the owner of a file can add spolight comments, which is of no use to us whatsoever. Is there any way of allowing all users to add spotlight comments to files on a server, without having to make everyone access the share as "admin"?
    Thanks,
    Tom

    I fixed this problem in the end, but the solution is not ideal. I set up a new user, and added short names reflecting the names of the users, so as far as they are concerned, they are still logging in as themselves.
    I did wonder if any user with their "primary group" set to the access group in the POSIX settings would be allowed to add file comments, but I try it in the end, though it might work.

  • Set Spotlight Comment if Blank

    I would like to add spotlight comments to a number of files but only if they do not contain a comment already. I'm using Get Specified Finder Items as the input. I thought I could use the Filter Finder Items action to filter on blank spotlight comments but the action doesn't allow this. I can't see where or how to specify the condition. It should be simple but I'm missing something. Thank you!

    You can use a Run AppleScript action for the filter - for example:
    1) Get Specified Finder Items
    2) Run AppleScript:
    <pre style="
    font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
    font-size: 10px;
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 5px;
    border: 1px solid #000000;
    width: 720px;
    color: #000000;
    background-color: #FFEE80;
    overflow: auto;"
    title="this text can be pasted into an Automator 'Run AppleScript' action">
    on run {input, parameters}
    return items that do not have Spotlight comments
    input: a list of Finder items to filter
    output: a list of items that do not have Spotlight comments
    set output to {}
    repeat with AnItem in the input
    tell application "Finder" to get the comment of AnItem
    if the result is "" then set the end of the output to (AnItem as alias)
    end repeat
    return the output -- pass the result(s) to the next action
    end run
    </pre>
    3) Set Spotlight Comments for Finder Items

  • Cross-Platform Spotlight Comments?

    Hi there, we have a massive database with oodles of images on it. Some images have the product name in the title, others do not. We'd like a quick and easy way to do a search for say...Potatoes, and have all of the images associated with potatoes show up. I know you can add Spotlight Comments to each individual photo, but I'm having trouble getting any results from my search.
    Also, will a PC running Windows be able to do any kind of a search of these items? Or is there a way to label the images with keywords so both a PC and a MAC can do searches for them? We're trying to avoid making duplicate images that are then moved into an actual photo called Potatoes which will no only bog down our server with more images, but could cause confusion if any images are changed and not move into the exact same folders again.
    Thanks for any input.

    Start with a search for *search server, search share, shared search*, or variants. There are many recent posts on the subject about hosed searches w/10.5.6. Whether or not there are solutions for your issue, I haven't a clue since everything I have is Apple—I don't do windoze.

  • Support for Spotlight Comments Yet?

    One of the glaring problems with iPhoto is its lack of support for Spotlight. I took 2 months to meticulously add Spotlight comments to all of my archived photos, only to find that when I import them into iPhoto, I can no longer search by metadata. How idiotic was that? Not even a utility to import them! Did they finally fix this in iPhoto 6?

    Nope, just tried this and the Spotlight Comments are lost: Not attached to the copy that's made in the iPhoto Library, and not imported into any field in the photo's metadata.
    Spotlight Comments seems a bit of a last minute good idea that never took off to me. I wonder if it will be exploited in future releases or if it will quietly get stuck as borderline useful as it is now. I agree: Apple added this field to Get Info; you'd think they'd make use of the **** thing in their software!

  • Spotlight search ignores spotlight comments

    Using the Commenteer utility I've modified hundreds of spotlight comments for files. But spotlight search doesn't find them. Why? mdimport doesn't seem to be running. Why?

    I figured out what is going on, but don't understand it. Commenteer lets me add spotlight comments in batch mode even when the files are locked. (All my photos are locked so I don't accidentally delete any.) The comments are really there--I checked. But if the files are locked when I change the comments, spotlight will not index the files. If I unlocked the files before using Commenteer to make a batch change to the comments, then spotlight will index the files. So my workaround for now is to unlock all the files before changing the comments. Spotlight doesn't "see" that a file has been updated, if it is locked. If I unlock it, change the comments, and then lock it again, Spotlight notices that and indexes the file. Kind of annoying.

  • Automator Folder Action: File Name = Spotlight Comment?

    Hey guys,
    I'm trying to have automator add the original filename of a file as spotlight comment when it is added to a certain folder. I can only use the "Set Spotlight Comments for Finder Items" in folder actions to add a specified comment, but nothing else. Is it possible to grab the file name via applescript?
    The idea behind this is to preserve the original file names of all downloaded files before they get renamed.
    Thanks,
    V

    Thanks for your reply, I now have your action installed and it does get the filenames, but I still can't add them to the spotlight comment text box. Looks like I didn't think this through properly.

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