Batch Export as PNG

Question

Hello, i'm having dreadful trouble exporting a batch of AIs to PNG (using illustrator CS4).
It seemed really obvious to record export>PNG>relevant setting as an action and then run that on the whole folder.
The trouble is that the action, when run as a batch (and only when run as a batch) skips the whole export step. it open the AI fine, runs through the action very quickly, and then fails to write the PNG.
what's more, i also tried this on a colleagues machine and his did exactly the same, so i'm thinking that it's me missing something obvious.
as a workaround i turned the dialogues on, but this kind of defeats the object.
any help would be very greatly appreciated.
cheers
Jez

Answer 1

You might try this
ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED
Copyright 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated
All Rights Reserved
NOTICE:  Adobe permits you to use, modify, and
distribute this file in accordance with the terms
of the Adobe license agreement accompanying it. 
If you have received this file from a source
other than Adobe, then your use, modification,
or distribution of it requires the prior
written permission of Adobe.
ExportDocsAsPNG24.jsx
DESCRIPTION
This sample gets files specified by the user from the
selected folder and batch processes them and saves them
as PDFs in the user desired destination with the same
file name.
// Main Code [Execution of script begins here]
// uncomment to suppress Illustrator warning dialogs
// app.userInteractionLevel = UserInteractionLevel.DONTDISPLAYALERTS;
var destFolder, sourceFolder, files, fileType, sourceDoc, targetFile, pngExportOpts;
// Select the source folder.
sourceFolder = Folder.selectDialog( 'Select the folder with Illustrator files you want to convert to PNG', '~' );
// If a valid folder is selected
if ( sourceFolder != null )
    files = new Array();
    fileType = prompt( 'Select type of Illustrator files to you want to process. Eg: *.ai', ' ' );
    // Get all files matching the pattern
    files = sourceFolder.getFiles( fileType );
    if ( files.length > 0 )
        // Get the destination to save the files
        destFolder = Folder.selectDialog( 'Select the folder where you want to save the converted PNG files.', '~' );
        for ( i = 0; i < files.length; i++ )
            sourceDoc = app.open(files[i]); // returns the document object
            // Call function getNewName to get the name and file to save the pdf
            targetFile = getNewName();
            // Call function getPNGOptions get the PNGExportOptions for the files
            pngExportOpts = getPNGOptions();
            // Export as PNG
            sourceDoc.exportFile( targetFile, ExportType.PNG24, pngExportOpts );
            sourceDoc.close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES);
        alert( 'Files are saved as PNG in ' + destFolder );
    else
        alert( 'No matching files found' );
getNewName: Function to get the new file name. The primary
name is the same as the source file.
function getNewName()
    var ext, docName, newName, saveInFile, docName;
    docName = sourceDoc.name;
    ext = '.png'; // new extension for png file
    newName = "";
    for ( var i = 0 ; docName[i] != "." ; i++ )
        newName += docName[i];
    newName += ext; // full png name of the file
    // Create a file object to save the png
    saveInFile = new File( destFolder + '/' + newName );
    return saveInFile;
getPNGOptions: Function to set the PNG saving options of the
files using the PDFSaveOptions object.
function getPNGOptions()
    // Create the PDFSaveOptions object to set the PDF options
    var pngExportOpts = new ExportOptionsPNG24();
    // Setting PNGExportOptions properties. Please see the JavaScript Reference
    // for a description of these properties.
    // Add more properties here if you like
    pngExportOpts.antiAliasing = true;
    pngExportOpts.artBoardClipping = false;
    //pngExportOpts.horizontalScale = 100.0;
    //pngExportOpts.matte = true;
    //pngExportOpts.matteColor = 0, 0, 0;
    pngExportOpts.saveAsHTML = false;
    pngExportOpts.transparency = true;
    //pngExportOpts.verticalScale = 100.0;
    return pngExportOpts;
Copy into a text editor and save as a .jsx file and place in the presets>scripts folder.