"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.

Similar Messages

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" 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!

"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

[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

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.

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 - how reset Finder Items?

I want to to defrag a big file, so I have thought to copy the file in an external disk, than rename the file in external disk and copy to directory in which there is the file to defrag.
Than revert to the original name the file in the external disk.
In this way I have a copy of the file in external disk and the original file and the file copied in HD.
I do that to avoid failure of external Hard Disk that could have the result to destroy the original file if this happen during the copy from external to internal HD.
I have made a workflow that do this:
1) Get Specified Finder Items (pictures/file)
2) Copy Finder Items (to DK1)
3) Rename Finder Items (DK1/file to DK1/filecopy)
4) Copy Finder Items (to pictures)
5) Get Specified Finder Item (DK1/filecopy)
6) Rename Finder Items (DK1/filecopy to DK1/file)
The problem is that in the 5 step the item passed to the 6 step are two (pictures/filecopy and DK1/filecopy).
I want only DK1/filecopy.
I have seen that Item passed to various step are:
1) Get Specified Finder Items (pictures/file) >>passed picture/file
2) Copy Finder Items (to DK1) >>passed DK1/file
3) Rename Finder Items (DK1/file to DK1/filecopy) >>passed DK1/filecopied
4) Copy Finder Items (to pictures) >>passed pictures/filecopied
5) Get Specified Finder Item (DK1/filecopy) >>passed two pictures/filecopied and DK1/filecopied
6) Rename Finder Items (DK1/filecopy to DK1/file) >> in error
I have have tried to make two workflow one with the step from 1 to 4 and another with the step 5 and 6.
If they run separately all is ok, but if they run in a single workflow (that is made with the step from 1 to 4 and the 5 step that recall the second workflow) happen the same thing that I have described before.

Stanley Horwitz wrote:
I have been working with Macs since 1986 and in the IT industry full time since about the same time and I honestly have no clue what you are attempting to do. What does "defrag a file" mean and why do you want to do that?
I want to copy a file to an external device, so system, copying file, write this without fragmentation, and then copy to original location.
In this way the result is to have the file unfragmented.
If you want to defrag your disk, by far the easiest and quickest way to do that is to take another disk drive that's as big or bigger in capacity as the disk you want to defrag, then format that disk, then simply use your favorite disk cloning tool to copy the contents of the disk you want to defrag to the other disk. The copying process to a newly formatted disk will write the data in an optimum manner onto the disk without any fragmentation on the destination disk. You can then, if you so desire, reverse the process and clone the cloned drive back to the original drive and you will end up with two defragmented disks with the same data on them. The biggest benefit to this strategy is that you get a complete backup of the contents of the disk.
OK, but I only want defrag 1 file, not all the disk.
If You see, I want the same manner that You suggest for the entire disk, applied only to 1 file.
There are also several utilities that will do disk defragmentation such as TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior. I think though that in all but the most extreme cases, it is a wast of time to use those utilities to defragment a disk. In fact, in most cases that I have seen on home Macs, the benefits of defragmentation are minimal at best, which is why I suggest simply doing a backup of the disk to another disk, because the big benefit there is that you have a fresh backup which is far more important in most cases than defragmenting a disk.
OK, I don't want defrag utilities, because I am not confident in the process.
For backup I use regularly Time Machine on two external disks.
All the matter is only to know if there is a manner to tell Automator wich is the file to use during the workflow.
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

Filter finder Items... broken? (also request to help streamline script)

Let me begin by saying that I've done the SAME THING for a long time with this Automator script, and it's worked flawlessly. I recently added some now automator actions (and later deleted them) thinking they were the culprit of why my "filter finder items" was showing no results, but I'm not sure at all at this point.
Here's the script (that has been working fine until at least the 7th):
It's long, so bear with me (I use this script to install custom Sims2 content when I download it:
("Get Specified Folder" uses the "Get specified finder items" action, I just didn't want to type that every time).
New Folder: Recent (in my downloads folder)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains .package)
Copy Finder items (to Recent)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains Sims2Pack)
Move finder itmes (to my core download folder (they're generally in subfolders after downloading, as are the .package files)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains Sims2Pack)
Copy finder items (to Recent)
Get Specified Folder: Recent
Create Archive (on desktop named Sims2)
Rename (add date to end of file name)
Rename (add time to end of file name)
Get Specified Folder: Recent
Move to trash
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains .package)
Move finder items (to Sims2 Downloads folder, which installs the custom content, replacing any repeats)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents
Filter finder items (name contains Sims2Pack)
Move Finder items (Sims 2 Packs folder within the downloads folder... these items must be installed into the game by double-clicking on them.)
Get Specified folder: Desktop
Get folder contents
Filter finder items (name contains Sims2)
Move Finder items (To Backup)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains MTS (most of the containing download folders (after they've been expanded by another automator script, have this at the beginning of the folder name due to where I commonly download my custom content)
Move to trash
And that concludes the script. I know it could probably be streamlined (another reason I'm posting the whole thing) but it worked until very recently, and I don't know what could cause it to no longer report results after filtering within the subfolders while within the main folder works fine.
To clarify, it's recently been simply deleting the MTS folders and creating a "Recent" folder and archiving it but it's empty. So the script is not filtering for the Sims2Pack data nor the .package data as it used to.
I haven't modified the script, and I've deleted all actions that I downloaded recently (backed them up in case they're not the culprit). Also ran disk permission repair but nothing was repaired in regards to Automator.
Thanks.
iMac Intel Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Here is an update to the script, however filter continue to not work as it once did.
New Folder: Recent (in my downloads folder)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains .package)
Copy Finder items (to Recent)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains Sims2Pack)
Move finder itmes (to my core download folder (they're generally in subfolders after downloading, as are the .package files)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains Sims2Pack)
Copy finder items (to Recent)
Get Specified Folder: Recent
Create Archive (on in "to backup" named Sims2)
Rename (add date to end of file name)
Rename (add time to end of file name)
Get Specified Folder: Recent
Move to trash
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains .package)
Move finder items (to Sims2 Downloads folder, which installs the custom content, replacing any repeats)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents
Filter finder items (name contains Sims2Pack)
Move Finder items (Sims 2 Packs folder within the downloads folder... these items must be installed into the game by double-clicking on them.)
Get Specified Folder: my downloads folder
Get folder contents (repeat for each subfolder found)
Filter finder items (name contains MTS (most of the containing download folders (after they've been expanded by another automator script, have this at the beginning of the folder name due to where I commonly download my custom content)
Move to trash
I removed the step where it was saving it to the desktop. If the filters ever work again, this should therefore go faster than before.

Using Variables to Open Finder Item

I have created a workflow that right now goes through the following actions:
1. Get Specified Finder Items
2. Open Finder Items (using TextEdit)
3. Watch Me Do (To Select All..Copy...Close Text Edit...Click in text input field of Safari...Paste)
What I would like to do is use some variables to determine what TextEdit File is opened. For example, I would have a text file named "Friday-FileA.rtf" and would like to have the workflow use the variable to determine what Weekday it is and open the appropriate file.
I am new to Automator and have no knowledge of AppleScript but am pretty competent with my mac. Please let me know if this is something that can be done rather easily.
Thanks in advance
Nick

say you have a file "friday-13.txt" on your desktop.
You can modify your workflow by changing the first action "get specified finder items" to:
1. get value of variable "current weekday".
2. run apple script action:
<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: #ADD8E6;
overflow: auto;"
title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Finder"
set wday to file (input & "-13.txt" as text) of (path to desktop)
end tell
return wday
end run</pre>
You can modify that as needed.

Need help with the Get Specified Servers action..

Hello,
Here is a workflow I have made (saved as a Finder plug-in):
1. Get specified servers --- afp://Sean:[email protected]/Sean
2. Connect to servers
3. Get selected finder items
4. Move finder items (to: desktop)
5. Eject disk
This workflow allows me to right-click on a file on my MacBook and move it to my iMac (it mounts the imac share, connects to it, transfers the file, then unmounts the share). It works perfect for me but I have one annoyance with it - the password part.. I would like your guys help in removing that bit.
I don't want my Mac to have a password, but I had to make one just for that step to work properly. Can anyone help me out here? I don't know much about server/URL stuff so any improvements that can be made there would be helfpul.
Thanks

Well, I could be wrong, but I don't believe you will be able to avoid using a password as it is a key element in security measures of the operating system.
As you found out even if you set up an account with no password and save off the keychain the OS still issues a dialog asking for a password for mounting the shared volume. In that case all you do is hit the "Connect" button and this could be automated in various ways (some listed below).
Setting up this method, while not really recommended, would still provide the facade of a secure system by challenging any other potential users to enter a password and reduce the number of keystrokes you need to enter.
Use AppleScript/Automator
tell application "System Events" to key code 36 -- return key
which could be placed in an Automator "Run AppleScript" action and saved off as a Finder plug-in contextual menu or an application/workflow.
Use Third-party Keyboard Shortcut apps
The AppleScript/Automator workflow could also be attached to a keyboard shortcut using one of the various third party apps that provide that functionality.
Some of those third party apps also give you the capability to send a keycode directly and have that attached to a keyboard shortcut.
RECOMMENDATION
Retain the password account with the user account info saved in the keychain. This can avoid the password dialog for server mounting and if automated, as described below, any situations in which the dialog can not be avoided.
The previously mentioned automation methods can easily be set up to actually enter your full password and hit the Connect/OK button so that you get complete security as long as someone else doesn't find out about the contextual menu or keyboard shortcut. It's as simple as adding another line or two to the AppleScript:
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "yourfullpassword"
delay 2
key code 36 -- return key
end tell

"get specified text" - how to pipe its result to next action in my Automato

trying to understand Automator's "get specified text" action. It seems to ask a question in the middle of a workflow, to which you input the answer. I want to pipe its output to the next action, ie, ask the user for a text string to which a text stamp will be applied to a multi-page PDF. Similiar to what Adobe Acrobat Pro can do if you go Documents/Add/Watermark.
There must be a simpler way then to spring for $500 to get a text stamp (basically a script's authors name) as a large diagonal background across all pages of a script thats been turned into a pdf.
Any suggestions or ideas are welcome. Im going to attempt to provide this solution free to the Mac community, since I couldnt find one out there.

OK, that makes a little more sense.
The Watermark PDF Files action isn't going to do what you want - at least not without a little more work.
If you look at the Automator definition of that action it requires a list of files as its input. You can't pass in a piece of text to use as the watermark.
Therefore the 'Watermark PDF Files' action can follow the 'Get Selected Finder Items' (since that returns a list of files), but the watermark action requires the watermark be specified at build time - you can't add a dynamic watermark at runtime.
In addition to that, the watermark action requires an image file to be used as the watermark, not a piece of text.
The only Automator solution I can see to this would be to have one action that asks for text and generates a corresponding image file. This can then be used as the watermark file by the action. Off-hand, though, I can't see an easy Automator way to create an image file from an arbitrary piece of text...

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.

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.
May I know how can I make use of variables to set text fields in Rename Finder Items action ? Is the above mentioned failure a confirmed bug of Leopard waiting to be fixed by Apple (after one whole year of beta testing !!) ? Thanks in advance.

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.

"Get Specified Finder Items"????

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