"get specified finder items" in automator pulling more than specified

In part of a larger workflow I copy 5 files to my iDisk. In the next step I select one of those items again using 'get specified finder items' from the same location, add a date to its name in the next step with the 'add date or times to finder item names' then finish the workflow.
However what is happening is the 'get specified finder items' I'm using to grab the file to be renamed, is actually grabbing all 5 of the files from the previous step. Only the one is showing in the 'get specified finder items' list but it grabs all 5 anyway.
Anyone see this before? Know a way to fix it?
Your help as always is very much appreciated. Thank you!

Keith Kaiser1 wrote:
In part of a larger workflow I copy 5 files to my iDisk.
In the next step I select one of those items again using 'get specified finder items' from the same location,
control-click on this "get specified items" action and select "ignore input". otherwise the previous action in the workflow will pass its output as input for this one. that's what's causing the doubles.
add a date to its name in the next step with the 'add date or times to finder item names' then finish the workflow.
However what is happening is the 'get specified finder items' I'm using to grab the file to be renamed, is actually grabbing all 5 of the files from the previous step. Only the one is showing in the 'get specified finder items' list but it grabs all 5 anyway.
Anyone see this before? Know a way to fix it?
Your help as always is very much appreciated. Thank you!

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Get Specified Finder Items - Clearing

I am new to Automator so please excuse if this question is obvious - but it isn't to me. I am trying to write an action to backup my important files. I can do it if I write just one file at a time in a separate action by "Get Specified Finder Items" - Filename followed by "Copy Finder Items" - Filename. Since I have several files I want backed up to different locations I tried writing one action and I tried to do the "Get Specified Finder Items," "Copy Finder Items" in a series. Well, the first one works well, file A goes to the backup A folder. But the next action is supposed to take file B and move it to the backup B folder. Well, what happens is that the second action takes files A and B and moves them to the backup B folder. The next takes files A, B and C and copies them to the backup C folder etc. etc. etc.
I am wondering if there is a way to clear the finder buffer (if that is what it is called) between my actions so that only file B is copied to backup B.
I have looked in the utility actions and did not find a way to do this. Any assistance would be appreciated.

No problem - there are a few things about Automator that are not obvious.
Note that this is a feature of Leopard's Automator (the OP appears to be running Leopard, although this is the Tiger Automator forum) - a separate action is needed for the same function in Tiger's Automator.

"Get Specified Finder Items"????

When I screen capture and often download files, the "Get Specified Finder Items" prompt pops up on my screen. I have to cancel it 2X and it never has anything to do with what I am working on.
Can anyone please help me figure out what it is asking for and why I'd be seeing it?
Thanks for your help.

I'm sorry for the vague description of my problem. I typically may have a couple apps running but am not running Automator when it happens. It seems to prompt me at random times and make me think there is some inadvertent shortcut set up to prompt it but I am not sure what it (the computer...Automator maybe??) is asking for.
Thanks for any help.

"Get Specified Finder Items" action and aliases

The Get Specified Finder Items action doesn't seem to work on aliases. That is, instead of selecting an alias, it selects the original file to which that alias points.
Any work-around?
(And, a bug, no?)

When you get the value of a variable, the result is added to the item list - for example:
1) Get Specified Finder Item {various file items}
2) Get Value of Variable {previous file items}
3) View Results --> the results of both of the above actions

Rename Finder Items with Automator in Leopard

I used following automator actions to rename all files contained in selected folders in Mac OS finder:
1. Get Selected Finder Items
2. Get Folder Contents (repeat for each subfolder found option on)
3. Rename Finder Items (Add Text before name, Show action option on)
First two actions were executed flawlessly. Unfortunately after keying in text to be added in front of every file name in text field of popup window on execution of last action, no file name was changed. Then I realized that same actions performed in automator application instead of invoking through Finder's contextual menu worked as expected. So the problem seem to be related to initialization of text value in text field of the action.
I decided to try with new variable feature introduced in Leopard version of automator. Clicking on Variables button next to Actions button in menu bar of Automator, then select following item:
Library > Text & Data > New Storage
I managed to provide a text value for the New Storage variable through "Library > Text > Ask for Text" and "Library > Utilities > Set Value of Variable" actions, but text field in Rename Finder Items action seem to reject the New Storage variable completely. So the attempt to provide text value to the Rename Finder Items action through user initialized variable failed without reason.
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I figured out a way to use variables in the Rename Finder Items.
In my case I want to rename the files to a sequential name. I can't link the variable to the "New Name" box in the Automater GUI.
But it helps to know that that the Automator is just creating an XML file and you can edit this directly.
To do this, create the Automator workflow and save it. Give the variable some distinct name like "myVariable".
In Finder, right click the Automator file and select Show Package Contents. Within this folder go to Contents and find the document.wflow file. This is the XML file, so open it with TextEdit or something.
Search the file for your variable name. The first instance of it should be in a section that starts with <key>variables</key>. All the variables will be listed here. Each variable has several lines to define it. The first will be the UUID. The UUID will have a line that is something like: <string>BD464B7A-ACDE-4A63-B595-FAF1DA6DE26E</string>. The BD464B7A-ACDE-4A63-B595-FAF1DA6DE26E is how Automator refers to your variable. Search the file for this UUID string and you will see. Whenever Automator wants to insert the variable, it will enter $(BD464B7A-ACDE-4A63-B595-FAF1DA6DE26E).
Copy this string, with the $() surrounding it. Close the wflow file. Now you can go back to Automator itself and paste it wherever you want your variable to appear, even if you can't normally insert the variable into that field.

Anyone get Play Movies to Loop a sequence more than twice?

Has anyone got Play Movies to loop more than once (show twice) using a folder of movies inputted via Get Specified Finder Items. It seems like a bug as it resets the loop number to 1 when saved or show action is selected. I doubt that the number field is passed or saved as a variable.
If it is a bug, I really need some sort of workaround if anyone can suggest one? My intent is to use an iMac as a self running theater for student film projects--to turn on in the morning, play movies all day long, then turn off at night.
Thanks

I am having a similar problem with iTunes 11 on a Windows 7 box. I was able to rent and play HD movies befor "upgrading" to iTunes 11, however now when I try and rent a movie in HD I get the error: "This cannot be played in HD on this computer. You must rent and watch the HD version on an HD-compatible device. Or, you can rent the SD version and watch it on this computer."
Guess i'll be renting movies from XBox from now on.

How can I get a E3000 or E4200 to manage more than 5 devices

How can I get a E3000 or E4200 to manage more than 5 devices? Come on Cisco, lets get real. EVERYONE has more than 5 devices to manage. The average family of 4 has 3 or 4 computers, 4 smart phones and at least a couple of tablets and maybe some TV or game consoles. Setting access control policies is a must for anyone who is a parent.
Does anyone know of a good router that has a reasonable set of access control features? I've always loved Cisco up to this point, but I'm frustrated by this significant limitation.

Fuggedaboutit. Cisco apparently has retreated from the more advanced Internet Access Policy (IAP) to leave users with their paltry Parental Controls (PC) instead. For example the E4200v1 had IAP+PC, and the E4200v2 has only PC.
And good luck trying to find a E4200v1. I spent the last week, ordered 3 of them from different sources, and every one of them was a V2 inside of a V1 box, even the last one I ordered directly from Linksys!
That's a very bizarre marketing scam they're pulling there. The sad thing is that I actually want to keep using their product line, but they are doing their best to push me away.
I too am now regrouping and looking for a competitor who does 2 things well:
(A) High performing dual-band wireless access point, w/ pswd-protected guest-mode
(B) Reliable & fairly full-featured Internet access control (parental control)
My basic requirements for "B" are:
(1) Allow restrictions by IP or better yet MAC address (Cisco PC's hostname list didn't work for me)
(2) Device list of at least 12 devices (obviously family size varies but Cisco's 5 is a joke)
(3) Restricty by days of week and time of day (hourly or half-hourly would be nice)
(4) Restrict by URL's and keywords, at least 12 per device or policy/rule
I wonder if there's a home router whose stock OS, meets these requirements. Otherwise I may have to look into using DD-WRT or similar.

How do you get the integer of a number with more than 10 digits

I can't seem to be able to get the integer of a number with more than 10 digits.
ex:
integer(12345678901.3) returns -539222987 when it should really return 12345678901
Thanks for the help
(I'm on director 11 at the moment)

You can write a Parent script to represent Big Integers. I wrote some code to get you started. It consist of two classes - "BigInt" and "Digit". At this point you can only add two "BigInts" and print out the value with a toString() function. Note that you pass a String to the "BigInt" constructor.
In the message window you could enter something like:
x = script("BigInt").new("999999999999")
y = script("BigInt").new("100000000000000000004")
z = x.add(y)
put z.toString()
And the output window will show:
-- "100000001000000000003"
Here are the two Parent scripts / Classes
-- Digit
property val
property next
on new me, anInt
val = anInt
next = 0
return me
end new
-- BigInt
property Num
property StringRep
on new me, aString
Num = script("Digit").new(Integer(aString.char[aString.length]))
curNum = Num
repeat with pos = aString.length - 1 down to 1
    curNum.next = script("Digit").new(Integer(aString.char[pos]))
    curNum = curNum.next
end repeat
return me
end new
on add me , Num2
curNum = Num
curNum2 = Num2.Num
result = curNum.val + curNum2.val
if result > 9 then
    carry = 1
else
    carry = 0
end if
result = result mod 10
sum = script("Digit").new(result)
curSum = sum
curNum = curNum.next
curNum2 = curNum2.next
repeat while curNum.ObjectP AND curNum2.ObjectP
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    if result > 9 then
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    result = result mod 10
    curSum.next = script("Digit").new(result)
    curSum = curSum.next
    curNum = curNum.next
    curNum2 = curNum2.next
end repeat
repeat while curNum.ObjectP
    result = curNum.val + carry
    if result > 9 then
      carry = 1
    else
      carry = 0
    end if
    result = result mod 10
    curSum.next = script("Digit").new(result)
    curSum = curSum.next
    curNum = curNum.next
end repeat
repeat while curNum2.ObjectP
    result = curNum2.val + carry
    if result > 9 then
      carry = 1
    else
      carry = 0
    end if
    result = result mod 10
    curSum.next = script("Digit").new(result)
    curSum = curSum.next
    curNum2 = curNum2.next
end repeat
StringRep = ""
me.makeString(sum)
return me.script.new(StringRep)
end add
on toString me
StringRep = ""
me.makeString(Num)
return StringRep
end toString
on makeString me, digit
if not digit then
    return
end if
me.makeString(digit.next)
put String(digit.val) after StringRep
end makeString

HT203433 How do I find out if I have more than one apple id

How do I find out if I have more than one id

You'll have to use your little gray cells on this one. How can anyone know if an apple ID belongs to you? There's no way to identify you.

[Automator] Using an ls command and then getting the finder items?

So i want to make an automator app that looks for all external hard drives and then ejects them. Unfortunatly to my experimentation you cant use the finder actions to search in the root directory so i simply added a shell script with
ls /Volumes
which works.
then i have a Filter finder items so it doesnt try to eject the Macintosh HD
then i have eject Disk.
The problem lies in that the shell script does not spit out finder items to the filter so the filter throws a warning because it isnt supplied the required data.
My question is, how do i get the shell script to pass down finder items to the filter so everything else runs through smoothly?
EDIT: i have python installed if that helps for simplicity i also know a small bit of C
Thanks
Tom Copcutt

Where did he say that? He only stated that he wanted to avoid ejecting the HD, which isn't possible in any case.
If avoiding .dmg is the issue, one way would be to hard code the possible disk names by using a list like this:
Replace the example volume names with your own volume names inside the curly brackets below;
Names must be quoted and comma separated as shown.
Spaces in names ARE allowed. You can name as many or as few volumes as you wish.
set gDiskList to {"External1 500GB", "Time Machine HD", "External2 HD", "External3 45GB"}
repeat with i in gDiskList
          set i to quoted form of i
      try
                    do shell script "diskutil umount " & i
          end try
end repeat

Selecting Finder Items in Automator

I am a long-time MAC user but have never used applescript or automator. I work in a Prepress department and need to find a simple way to select certain folders quickly.
Here's the scenario:
I have a folder full of jobs. They would look something like this:
12345_AdvertisingAgency
12349_CarCompany
13245_WhoeverCompany
13568_AnyCompany
Typically this folder would contain 500-600 folders with the same naming convention.
I need to find a way to ignore the first six characters (all 5 numbers + the underscore) and select the folder by the first letter after the underscore so that I can put all the "A's" in one folder, all the "B's" in another folder, and so on through the alphabet.
Does anyone know of an automator action that can do this?
Thank for any help.

Your Prep:
1. Create the destination folders, A, B, C, etc.
Your workflow:
1. Find Finder Items - Where= +jobs parent folder+ | Whose=Name-Contains-_A
click on Options and select 'Show Action When Run'
2. Move Finder Items- To= +destination folder+ ( A )
click on Options and select 'Show Action When Run'
Running it:
Hit the Run button. The first time you run it, the options are already set to move all the A jobs so you should be able to just hit Return to move through.
On subsequent runs, just change the letter/folder in Whose and To

Capitalized finder item with automator

I've quite a lot of items on the finder that I want to quickly capitalize the name of it,
how can I do that with automator?

I figured out a way to use variables in the Rename Finder Items.
In my case I want to rename the files to a sequential name. I can't link the variable to the "New Name" box in the Automater GUI.
But it helps to know that that the Automator is just creating an XML file and you can edit this directly.
To do this, create the Automator workflow and save it. Give the variable some distinct name like "myVariable".
In Finder, right click the Automator file and select Show Package Contents. Within this folder go to Contents and find the document.wflow file. This is the XML file, so open it with TextEdit or something.
Search the file for your variable name. The first instance of it should be in a section that starts with <key>variables</key>. All the variables will be listed here. Each variable has several lines to define it. The first will be the UUID. The UUID will have a line that is something like: <string>BD464B7A-ACDE-4A63-B595-FAF1DA6DE26E</string>. The BD464B7A-ACDE-4A63-B595-FAF1DA6DE26E is how Automator refers to your variable. Search the file for this UUID string and you will see. Whenever Automator wants to insert the variable, it will enter $(BD464B7A-ACDE-4A63-B595-FAF1DA6DE26E).
Copy this string, with the $() surrounding it. Close the wflow file. Now you can go back to Automator itself and paste it wherever you want your variable to appear, even if you can't normally insert the variable into that field.

Rename Finder Items from Automator doesn't work correctly!

I made a rename finder items in Mac OS X 10.4 by just using rename finder items task and save as a plug in for finder. It was working fine. I tried to use it in 10.5, but it doesn't really change the names. I created a new one or even tried to modify the workflow, but it still not working. Can someone verify the issue? Thank you.

I can verify the issue, but I have no solution. Very frustrating, as I used to batch rename all the time in just the same way.

I have sold some items on pre sale more than 31 days where do I find those transactions?

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Sounds of custom email notifications in Mail you would like DockStar and MailActOn. These things should really spice up your email on your Mac.
Message was edited by: satcomer

Find parent/child relationships At More Than 2 Levels

Hello,
Does anyone have a solution to find parent/child relationship for data more than 2 levels deep?
I have a solution when there's a simple parent-child relationship but not when there's a grandparent-parent-child relationship or deeper.
Ex. I have a table company_parent_child that stores the relationship betwen a company and it's direct parent.
create table TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD
PARENT_ID NUMBER(10),
COMPANY_ID NUMBER(10)
insert into TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD values (1, 10);
insert into TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD values (1, 11);
insert into TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD values (1, 12);
insert into TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD values (2, 13);
insert into TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD values (10, 100);
insert into TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD values (10, 101);
insert into TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD values (10, 102);
insert into TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD values (11, 103);
1->
___10->
______100,101,102,
___11->103
Companies 100, 101 and 102 are under parent 10 and grandparent 1.
I need to create such a view or another temp table so that when I pass the parent ID, I will pull all the children on all levels. In addition, and this is the tricky part, when I join this new temp table or view to another data table without any parameters, the data should not be duplicate, ie. each company ID should appear only once.
create table TEMP_JOIN
company_id number(10),
order_id varchar2(10)
insert into TEMP_JOIN values (100, 'a');
insert into TEMP_JOIN values (101, 'b');
insert into TEMP_JOIN values (102, 'c');
insert into TEMP_JOIN values (103, 'd');
insert into TEMP_JOIN values (10, 'e');
insert into TEMP_JOIN values (11, 'f');
insert into TEMP_JOIN values (12, 'e');
insert into TEMP_JOIN values (13, 'f');
Thanks.

start by learning CONNECT BY/START WITH. once you've
written a query to read the grandparent-parent-child
relationship, then come back with more questionsYes. we did look heavily into connect by/start with, in fact along with "connect_by_iscycle","connect_by_isleaf","connect_by_root" as well.
Our dilemma is that when a joint is made between those two tables mentioned above TEMP_COMPANY_PARENT_CHILD and TEMP_JOIN, we are not able to create a view that would contain distinct company_ids, each mapped to a unique order id.
The problem is we cannot have this type of joint when there are "n" level relationship between companies (or company_id). Basically, I think we should have our unique order id mapped to a unique key. This unique key should be a specialized key that we can know at anytime the entire path of the ancestry which we can know by sys_connect_by_path(company_id,'/') path.
How do we know which path to take. The best bet is to "connect_by_isleaf" and just have the distinct "deep" path which form the specialized unique key. If you need help on this let me know. (A hint, sort by LEVEL and then do a rank after partitioning by company id and then filter the records by rank = 1, try this one!!!)
So, we will eventually have a joint (say Table X) like
PATH ORDER_ID
/1/10/100 a
/1/10/101 b
/1/10/102 c
/1/10 e
/1
/1/11/103 d
/1/11 f
I think this is the best view we can have to maintain a joint with no repetition along PATH as well as ORDER_ID. If you have any other thoughts, let me know.
Then you query by path using INSTR to pull records by company_id.
for example, if you want to get all the children for company_id "10" you would just say
select * from X where INSTR(PATH,10,1,1) <> 0
or if you want to get all the children for company_id "11" you would just say
select * from X where INSTR(PATH,11,1,1) <> 0
What do you think? Has anyone used the path information for traversing the tree? Or is there any article that tells us how to make effective use of sys_connect_by_path(company_id,'/') path.
Thank you. Hope it made sense!

"get specified finder items" in automator pulling more than specified

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