Automator Action "Find Finder Items" bug...

Hello,
I created an application that searches SD flash memory cards (out of a Canon video camcorder) that are formatted FAT32 for files that have a .MOD extension and copies them to mounted server volumes for transcoding to .MOV (to later use in an editor). Most memory cards work with the "Find Finder Items" action item returning the whole contents of the SD card volume's MOD files. Other SD cards return no result even though the files are clearly visible to Finder when you manually look for them. When I run the workflow, it does the search and returns nothing without an error to the app. Any suggestions as to why some SD cards are different in this regard? Thanks!

I'm not sure what the action is using to search, but a name extension does not include the period. Another approach would be to get the entire contents of the memory card, and filter the items from there.

Similar Messages

Automator - Filter Finder Items bug?

I've only started using Automator a few months ago, but now I ran into a problem, which I think is not my fault, but is a bug in Automator.
Here's the scenario:
What I have is a Folder Action on the Downloads folder, and the following list of actions in order:
Get Finder Items: how.i.met.your.mother.s04e05.srt (this is for testing purposes)
Filter Finder Items - if ANY of the following are true:
Name contains "big.bang.theory"
Name contains "how.i.met.your.mother"
Name contains "fringe"
etc
I managed to find out that the same kind of container (here: Name) could not be used multiple times, because it gives no result in case "Any" of them are true. There is no way to test if any of these strings are present in the file name. I thought I could use this action like a function with "OR"-separated boolean parameters, but apparently that only works if I change the container type, e.g. I use Kind instead of Name. Meaning, if there is only one Name container, then it outputs the correct result (the .srt file, if the statement is true).
So, did I do something wrong, or is this really a bug in Automator? If you have an alternate suggestion on how to solve this, please don't hold it back

I have the same problem.
I am trying to select ANY of the following extentions: JPG, PNG, TIFF and I get no output. While if I only select one extention I do get the right output for the extention selected.
ANY of the following are true
               File extention          is          JPG
               File extention          is          PNG
               File extention          is          TIFF
     ~~~no results produced~~~
ANY of the following are true
               File extention          is          JPG
     ~~~001.JPG, 002.JPG, etc..~~~

Is there a bug in Automator filter finder items?

I'm trying to do a batch processing script and there seems to be a bug with items created earlier in the script. For example, the 2brokegirls.jpg file was created earlier in the script and added to the main folder whose contents can be seen in the get folder contents action at the top. however, the filter finder items misses that item when filtering by the extension ".jpg" which as you can see obviously appears at the top. Is this a bug in Automator? My guess is that the filter is using some spotlight indexing and that index hasn't been updated since the file was just added. Does anyone know of a workaround?
Thanks.

I also have this problem. I am getting literally hundreds of emails each day althoug i have clicked all the radio buttons to not receive any emails in "my preferences... email notifications. THis is gumming up my Ipad, Iphone and email in box Help!!

Automator Filter Finder Items

A very simple task, which I have attempted to figure out many times over the last few months; but my repeated attempts haven't been successful. This should be easy for someone to resolve…
I would like to strip out all the files of a certain extension (.txt) from an hierarchy of nested folders, & move them to the Trash. (Told you it was easy!)
Here's what I think ought to work:
• Create an Automator Workflow
• 'Ask for Finder Items' to select the topmost folder
• 'Get Folder Contents' with 'Repeat for each subfolder found' — (the results successfully include all the relevant files)
• 'Filter Finder Items': "find files where any of the following are true: file extension is .txt" — (I tried "txt" as well as ".txt")
• 'Move Finder Items to Trash'.
The files turn up (alongside loads of other junk) in the 'Get Folder Contents' step, & they are reported in the results; but when I try to filter out everything apart from the .txt files, so that only the .txt files remain, the filter reports no results.
So the 'Filter Finder Items' action completes with no results, & with a warning that: The action “Move Finder Items to Trash” was not supplied with the required data.
I think it must be something obvious, but I can't figure it out, & although I've searched extensively online, everyone else with similar problems has other complications which get resolved… so they lose interest just at the point where I think they're going to reveal the solution.

You need to understand the issues here. Automator was released with 10.4 (Tiger), and many of the core automator actions date from that time. This introduces forward-compatability problems: things that should work (and maybe did work) in 10.4 might not work as specified in 10.6, depending on if/how the underlying cocoa APIs have changed. Now, in the best of all possible worlds, Apple would update automator actions with each new upgrade, but it's probably not needed for the bulk of the actions, and Apple may not be aware of problems that do exist with given actions (that depends on whether people filed meaningful bug reports on them).
Don't be confused by the seeming simplicity of what I did: the Move Finder Items to Trash action probably uses cocoa file system APIs directly, whereas my applescript leverages the developed programmatic underpinnings of the Finder - the Finder has a built-in system for moving files in bulk, whereas the action is obviously moving files one at a time (which is where things are getting congested).
Filter Finder Items seems to be a simple metadata search (just another use of the spotlight framework, which hasn't changed much since its inception) so I can't see any way in which it would fail. it is, of course, limited by the same things that spotlight is limited by - it won't find material that's not indexed and may not do exactly what one always expects (e.g., may not recognize an extension as an extension unless the extension belongs to an app registered with the system) but other than that there's very little it can do wrong. As a general rule, actions that deal only with manipulating automator data (e.g. modifying references passed from one action to the next) won't break. You'll only see breakage with actions that need to access exterior frameworks that have changed significantly since the actions were created.
That's the best answer you're going to get: one can't prove a negative, so there's no way to demonstrate that FFI isn't broken. it's easy enough to check for a given task, though - just run the workflow you have on a test folder without the deleting action, check the results window, and compare it to the results you expect (which you can gather by eye in a Finder search window, through an applescript, through an app that will report the number of files of given types in a folder…).

Automator: Copy Finder Items Question

Hola,
Quick question about the Copy Finder Items action in automator: the "replace existing files" option, how is sameness determined? In other words, according to what criteria does Automator determine that two files are the same, and so eligible for replacement in the destination folder when that option is chosen? For example, would file Mydog.doc, modified 10/14/05, 230k be viewed as the same thing as Mydog.doc., modifided 2/21/06, 150k?
Cheers,
stu

As far as the Finder is concerned, the comparison is based on file name only.
It doesn't care about file size or modification date. If the name is the same the existing file will be replaced.

Automator Open Finder Items Won't Work in Plug-In

I'm having another Automator problem in Leopard.
This time I have a workflow that is intended to combine PDFs selected in Finder and open the resulting document in Preview. The steps are:
1. Get Selected Items
2. Combine PDF Pages, Combine by appending pages
3. Open Finder Items, Open with Preview
The workflow runs fine if I'm running it from within Automator. When I save it as a plug-in, the Open Finder Items portion doesn't work. If I turn on Show this Action, I get a dialog box with a dropdown list of programs with Preview already selected along with Cancel and Continue buttons. Clicking the Continue button does nothing.
As a test, I tried removing the Combine PDF Pages step from the workflow and saving it as a plug-in. My expectation is that this version would simply open the items selected in Finder. Unfortunately, that didn't work either.
Anyone have a clue for me?

I'm having a similar problem. When running from within Automator everything is fin, but the plug in doesn't get the finder items. Oddly, I have ONE old workflow that takes the word "folder" away from a file name. That one works fine, but doesn't require any action once I select it. It doesn't even open the automator show action dialog window to make any changes. Weird how this one is still working and the other ones won't.

Automator Rename Finder Items NOT working in Leopard

I used to be able to Replace Text in filenames, as you would expect with Automator, now my old or new Automator actions don't work for this, whether I run them as a Finder plugin or from the Automator Run button...
Anyone else have this problem, or better yet success?

The real problem here is, why does the Finder have to be so ********! Why all this trouble just to change filenames?!?! Why use automator to do something so simple?!?! I have to use but I hate it!
Please, despite all the Windows problems and faults (and I hate Windows and love Mac), they have a better file manager then we do, because the explorer is a good tool unlike the finder! Why can't we just choose the items and do some "rename" option, or just select all, press "enter" and write what we want (doing a sequential rename by default).
Come on, if windows explorer can do this, why can't we?!?!?
The automator should be used to more advanced stuff, not to just simply rename items...

Automator Print Finder Items always aborts

I have an automator script to print a document two-sided that worked in Tiger, but fails in Leopard. I recreated the script from scratch, but the Print Finder Items step works for a while and then aborts the script.
I've tried using Default Printer and a specific printer in the Print Finder Items step, but both have this problem.
Is this a known problem? Is there a known workaround?

Dale Boss wrote:
Thanks for your offer, and I'd love to take you up on it, but I can't figure out how to post the workflow. I don't see a way to attach, and using the clipboard doesn't work.
It's a duplexing script. It starts with Extract Odd&Even Pages (even) and then Print Finder Items (default printer). That second step fails. There's more to the script but that may be enough for you. If not, a hint on posting a workflow?
just write down the sequence of actions and options that you use. It shouldn't take too long. I don't know any other way of posting workflows.

Automator Copy Finder Items - file couldn't be saved error

I have a simple automator sequence that suddenly stopped working for no apparent reason. Copy Finder Items has started returning an error "the file xxx couldn't be saved to the folder yyy" Happens for different files and folders. Can't see anythng that's changed. Any ideas?

I'm currently having the same issue, and have had it with mulitple automator scripts on multiple computers, but it's not fixing itseltf. Anyone know what this error could be?
I've noticed that I get the above error most often after getting and then correcting permissions errors in the same workflow. Any help would be most appreciated.
Thanks!

Automator - Filter Finder Items filtering contents of sub folders

I have an external hard drive and I want to keep my iTunes music library automatically backed up on it. I am using automator to copy my most recent files to the external (run the script once a week). I let iTunes manage all my audio files, etc so I figured the created, modified, opened dates would be the best way to filter the items I want to copy over. The workflow is as follows.
1) Get Specified Finder Items (iTunes Library Music folder)
2) Get Folder Contents (All artist directories (Repeat for each subfolder found is NOT checked)
3) Filter Finder Items (ANY of Date Last Modified, Date Created, Date last opened in the last week)
4) Copy finder items (to my external hard drive)
I am having two problems.
1) If I play a song from my second hard drive iTunes copies it into it's directory when it opens... iTunes Music > Artist > Album > Song.mp3. The mp3's modified date, created date, and last opened date is the same as the file that got copied. The new Artist and Album directories that were created by itunes have current created dates (makes sense). However, the filter is still not catching it. Only if the mp3 is current will the filter catch it. I DON'T have 'Repeat for each subfolder found'... shouldn't the filter check for the folder's modified, created and last opened dates?
2) If everything works the way I want it to I see this to be a problem in the future. If I add an album by an artist that I already have an album for, the filter will skip it. Any suggestions on how I could handle this problem?
Thanks.

Found out that since Hebrew was set up first in the language option the filter on textual was failing. After I changed the order of the languages in the language preferences the file filter by name, extension etc… worked O.K.
Nati

Automator (move finder items)

I have a service that moves finder items to a particular folder. Since I started using this I noticed I occasionally will need to move an item with the same name into this folder. Is there a way I can get the service to move the second item with the same name, but instead of overwriting the first item, have it add a -1 or something? If I open something like a zip file multiple times in finder, it creates the second one with a 1 after the name. That's exactly what I need. Any way to do that with a service like this?

No, I didn't give up on the thread, I just went to work with what you gave me to see what I could do with it. It's just that you've been nothing but extremely helpful and patient with me in the past; and I started to feel like I was coming to the board, putting up my problems, and you do everything for me. I know you're here to contribute to the community, but I don't like to take advantage. I am making an effort to learn this stuff now, I just have to make baby steps!
Okay, here is the deal with this item. I actually want to apply this with more than one operation, but the basic script or concept would remain pretty much the same. We create lots of documents like invoices, receipts, shipping labels, etc., that usually get saved as pdf onto the desktop. Then, they are named, often with the date and particular file name and finally moved into the proper folders. For example, shipping labels get saved to desktop with the default name of something like
vty3RlsIK.LabelGenerationServlet.part
Then I would change the name to something like
12-31-2009USPSLabel.pdf
Then, I would move it to the folder where we keep the shipping labels for records.
So, the service I created actually does more than just moving the file. It goes like this:
service receives selected pdf
in finder
name single item in finder item names (to: USPS_Label.pdf)
add date or time to finder item names (before name, underscore separator)
move finder items (to target folder)
open finder item (with default application)
The other ones I need would be similar, except they don't usually need to be opened afterward, just named and moved, for the most part. I figured I could continue to just use the name change function of automator before running the script, but if would run faster or more efficiently if that were also part of the script, I suppose that would be better. And I would like to be able to have the numbers go up through as many as I need. If it's a matter of just adding in all the possibilities of existing names up to the number I need, that's tedious work I don't mind doing now to save on having to name all these files in the future!
Also, these files are always named differently, so the source file would need to just be selected file, not the actual name.
Finally, I tried to play with the script to name the desktop like you said, but would it be something like
set source_folder to folder (path to desktop)
or
set source_folder to (path to desktop)
I still need to learn a little more before I understand the way that works. I am so used to only using the unix path, I like the ability to use (path to desktop) that's really interesting.
I think I may have rambled a bit, but that should explain the details of what I'm trying to accomplish.
thanks

Putting Variables in Action "Find Finder Items"

Hello! I'm using Automator to make a workflow. One of my action in my workflow is to find finder items. I'd like to tell Automator to find items that start with a specific string of text (the text is "016") stored in a variable. Since Automator does not allow me to insert a variable directly, I tried to add the variable by adding the variable's UUID. I followed the method outlined in this website:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080213200213250
But even after I put my variable's UUID as "$(9051E0AA-257F-4F00-9A58-50677FB0C07E)", it seems that Automator does not understand, as the results of the action "Find Finder Items" returned no files at all. I tried to store my string as "Storage" and "Text" and used the same method, but it still didn't work. Thank you very much!

I'm not sure what the action is using to search, but a name extension does not include the period. Another approach would be to get the entire contents of the memory card, and filter the items from there.

How can I edit an Automator action for Word?

I'm running Word 2008 on a Macbook Pro, Mac OS 10.5.
Word comes with a selection of Automator actions, including one to find and replace text in Word. I often want to convert standard numerals to old-style numerals, which are part of the extended glyphs set in fonts I use. Automator will allow me to set up ten find/replace actions (for the numbers 0-9) that successfully replace all the numerals with old-style numerals. But it only does it for the main body of the document, not for the footnotes. I need to be able to do it for all the footnotes.
I thought I might find a workaround by adding an AppleScript to my workflow, which would shift the focus in Word to the footnotes and rerun the find/replace actions. I mapped the menu item View/Footnotes to the keystroke command-) and inserted this AppleScript into the Automator workflow:
tell application "Microsoft Word"
tell application "Microsoft Word" to activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Microsoft Word"
keystroke ")" using command down
end tell
end tell
end tell
But the find/replace actions simply repeat what they'd done before, converting the numerals in the main body but not in the footnotes. I then thought that perhaps I should have an AppleScript to do the find/replace itself, once the footnotes have been selected, so I created the following (command-H accesses the find/replace dialog box in Word 2008):
tell application "Microsoft Word"
tell application "Microsoft Word" to activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Microsoft Word"
keystroke "H" using command down
keystroke "1"
keystroke tab
keystroke ""
end tell
end tell
end tell
The character after the fourth keystroke command is the glyph for old-style numeral 1. For some reason Word reinterprets this as the letter a. So using AppleScript I can only replace the numerals 1-9 with the letters a-i.
I'm pretty hopeless at even this very basic level of programming, but I presume that there's something in the Automator action 'Find and replace in Word' that specifically tells it not to look anywhere but the footnotes. I also presume it's possible to insert a command to tell it to operate on the footnotes (and headers and footers: everywhere!) too.
Does anyone know a way to edit an Automator action? I'm willing to experiment and fiddle with one until I find a way that works, if nobody knows the exact changes that I'd need to make, but I just don't know how to edit an Automator action in the first place. A bit of googling suggests that I could do it in XCode, and that that is bundled with my Mac, but I don't have it.
This all used to work when Office used to allow VBA (and I was using a horrible Windoze machine). Maybe someone would prefer just to find a way of creating a solution our of the old code, so here's one part of what I used (to change the number 1):
For Each aStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
With aStory.Find
.ClearFormatting
With .Replacement
.ClearFormatting
End With
.Execute FindText:="1", ReplaceWith:=ChrW(63281), _
Format:=True, MatchCase:=True, Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
Next aStory
Thanks in advance for any help.

Thanks to all three contributors for their generous help so far. Mac people are lovely.
BDAqua's suggestion wouldn't work, I think, because copying footnote text into another application and then back into Word would lose all the associations between footnote references in the body and the footnotes themselves. I wish I could do what Klaus1 says, but Word 2008 won't allow the creation of Macros any more. They've shut off support for their creation. Nice MS. red_menace's suggestion seems very plausible and I'll look into a way of mapping the old style numerals to specific keystrokes. That might do it.
Reflecting on what you all said, I looked again through Word's help menus and eventually got pointed towards this page of 'help': <http://tinyurl.com/6398l6>. This is completely impenetrable for me, though it does compare a VBA script for Word 2004 to an AppleScript. This encourages me to hope that it should be possible to translate my original VBA script (part of which I included in my first message) into AppleScript, though I don't know how to do it because I don't really understand the language in the first place (the VBA script was put together by someone else).

"Ask for Finder Items" Automator action broken?

OK, I'm pulling my hair out on Automator (again). I'm on OS X Lion 10.7.1.
Here's what I want to do: I have image files named "something-something (S1).png" and I want to create a copy of each file named "something-something (S2).png" then resize that copy to 50% the size of the original. A perfect choice for Automator, I would have thought.
So here's the workflow I came up with:
1. Ask for Finder Items: Type set to Files and Allow Multiple Selection checked.
2. Duplicate Finder Items: To create a copy, hopefully named "something-something (S1) copy.png".
3. Rename Finder Items: Set to Replace Text, with Find set to "(S1) copy" and Replace set to "(S2)" (in basename only).
4. Scale Images: Set to By Percentage 50.
I would have thought that would have worked. Trouble is, it doesnt even get to first base. When I run the workflow I see the expected choose file dialog, and I choose a test PNG file. Then Automator happily announces that "Ask for Finder Items completed" in the log, and proceeds to sit .. and sit ... and sit. It says it's running, but nothing is happening. No duplicate file action happens, no rename .. nothing. Oh, and yes, I do see the selected filename in the "Results" area for the Ask for Finder Items action.
What's going on? Any ideas? For a supposedly intuitive tool I find automator inscrutable (and I'm a 30 year seasoned operating system oftware developer).
TIA,
--Tim

FWIW, if you've found a bug, please contact Apple Support folks or (if you have access) use the BugReport tool.
(This is a user forum, and the Apple Engineering folks may or may not see any reports that are posted here.)

Automator 2.2 "Copy Finder Items" Action Error

Hello all,
When I try to create an Automator workflow that finds a type of file (pdf) in a nested folder structure and copies those files to another folder - essentially extracting the pdfs from their nested folders - I get an error message.
1) I use the "find Finder items" action. I specify the top-level folder and set the kind to "document"
2) It returns 56 items
3) I use "copy Finder items" action and specify a new folder
4) The copy action fails stating that a given file "couldn't be saved in the folder". It does not always error-out on the same file. Changing or creating a new folder doesn't help.
I have tried this under two user accounts with the same result. I have tried deleting preferences. The same error results.
Any ideas?
I am running 10.7.1 on a 15" MacBook Pro, early 2011.

I was having the same issue.
I found another solution: instead of copying files, you could move files.
1) Duplicate your original folder (unless you want to move/extract your files entirely to the new folder) (right click the folder and select duplicate)
2) Create a new folder as the destiny folder
3) Open automator and use the following actions (in order) on the workflow
- Find Finder Itens (browse to your source folder; select "any"; select "extension"; select "end with"; type "pdf") (you can do the same thing with the actions "get specified finder items" combined with "filter finder items")
- Get Folder Contents (and mark repeat for each subfolder found) (use this action if you have subfolders)
- Move Finder Itens (browse to your destination folder, that you created previously)
Now you can delete the duplicated folder.

Automator Action "Find Finder Items" bug...

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