Can't use "Copy Finder Items" after "Run Workflow"

Create a simple Automator workflow:
Set just 1 action "Create Thumbnail Images" and save it. I called it "wf1.workflow".
Now create the second workflow with 3 actions:
"Get Specified Finder Items" action (choose an image file here).
->
"Run Workflow" action (specify "wf1.workflow" as a workflow, select "Return workflow results", check "Wait for workflow to finish").
->
"Copy Finder Items" (specify any location)
Now run the workflow. Everytime I get an error.
The log:
Get Specified Finder Items completed;
Run Workflow (wf1) completed;
Copy Finder Items failed
* -[NSAppleEventDescriptor count]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x113185d0
The same workflow works fine in Tiger, so I think there is a bug in Leopard Automator.
Am I right? Is there any workaround?

I can confirm I got the same results for the workflow, just don't know why as of yet. And then I somehow got it to work.
I checked the results for each action and they didn't seem unusual. The results of "Get Specified Finder Items" is a single parenthesized text string representing the file's path. The results of "Copy Finder Items" is an alias, but that should be okay.
So, deleted the thumbnail from the first run, and then ran the workflow again. It got stuck on "Run Workflow" and hung for a while. So I stopped it and removed "Run Workflow", and then added it in again. Presto! It worked, sort of. It didn't copy the thumbnail, instead it copied the original file. I'd forgotten to reset it to "Return workflow results". So, it seems to be something to do with returning the workflow results instead of the action input.
I'm going to do some more testing.

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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.
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I was having the same issue.
I found another solution: instead of copying files, you could move files.
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Now you can delete the duplicated folder.

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Hi All,
I am having same issue too. Can anyone you advise? Thank you.

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I have a Toshiba USB Flashdisk formatted with a Windows format (so that both Mac and PC can read/write it).
I have a folder inside Documents where I want to backup to my flashdisk regularily (i'll plug in the drive, and then run the automator workflow).
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I've also found that after an upgrade to Lion an Automator script I've been using to back up my Entourage 2008 identity to a USB drive no longer works, failing with a report that Copy Finder Items couldn't copy to the destination (which it had been happy doing under Snow Leopard).
I had saved the workflow as an application in the Utilities folder. First of all I also discovered that the Utilities folder permissions had been set differently, with "system" as the owner and as the only account with Read & Write permissions. I had to change the folder permissions and then having opened the "application" in Automator had to unlock it there too.
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The script is essentially the one described here:
http://www.officeformachelp.com/2009/04/quit_all_microsoft_applications_before_b acking_up/
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OK, I am now going to try to teach you to fish
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I have a workflow that is reading images names & pathways from a text file, and copying the images in the text file into another folder. My problem is coming with the "Copy Finder Items" action. If I have the same image that I want copied into the folder, it will only copy it once. Actually, when I run the workflow, all of the images appear in the results section of the copy finder items. However, any duplicate images are not actually in the folder that it is copied to. Is there any way to correct for this, so that I can copy an image into a folder more than one time?
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Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

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Can't use "Copy Finder Items" after "Run Workflow"

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