Pass input to Automator's "Ask for Finder Items"

Hi,
I have created an Applescript in Automator, which is set up to determine a folder location where config files reside.
I would like to pass this location to "Ask for Finder Items", so that the default config file is selected, but the user can select their own config file if they prefer.
I can't see any way to reference my location variable in the "Ask for Finder Items" action.
I've also tried to view the "Ask for Finder Items" sourcecode for a hint, but can't figure out how to do this either.
Any help greatly would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Dan

Found this approach which is working for me:
set config_file to choose file with prompt "Locate the config file and click OK" default location MYLOCATIONVARIABLE
This opens the finder at the correct folder.

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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.
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3. Rename Finder Items: Set to Replace Text, with Find set to "(S1) copy" and Replace set to "(S2)" (in basename only).
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Never tired Run Workflow before so as as a test I rn these two
and the Ask for Finder items in the called workflow ran OK.
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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"
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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.

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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…).

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I'm taking my first crack at Automator, and while I've made good progress, one of the built-in actions, "Filter Finder Items", is just not behaving predictably. Basically, I'm doing the following:
1) Get selected finder items - pulls a selected folder
2) Set variable - this gives me a variable for the name of the folder we're working with
3) Create a new folder inside the selected folder
4) Get folder contents of selected folder
5) Filter for three different file extensions - here's where my problem starts
6) Move the filtered files into the new subfolder (though it really seems to be copying, which necessitates the following steps to get rid of the original files)
7) Get contents of selected folder again
8) Filter on the same three files extensions - this time it works properly
9) Move filtered files to Trash
For some reason, the first filter action doesn't seem to be working at all - if I have 15 files in the selected folder, but only three that match the filter, all 15 will be copied to the new subfolder. The second folder action will then, inexplicably, work exactly as it should and move the proper files to the Trash.
Does anybody know why this action doesn't want to cooperate? Has anybody else seen something similar?
Thanks for any hints/help.
Rick
Message was edited by: rnb2

Saving the workflow as an application should be all that is needed, but the first action (the one that gets the items to work with) may not be correct for your usage. If the first action is *Get Selected Finder Items*, unfortunately the selection would be the application itself, since that is what was most recently selected.
In this case, the application can be dragged onto the Finder's toolbar (where it will work with the current selection), otherwise the first action can be removed and the application used as a droplet (items dropped onto the application are passed to the workflow) or a Finder plugin.
The first action can also be replaced with an *Ask for Finder Items* action (ignoring input).

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I want an Action that can copy Finder items directly into the same folder the Action resides in, i.e. without specifying where or asking the user where.
Is this possible? All I've been able to create so far is an Action whereby I need to specify the folder or get the user to specify it.

OK, I am now going to try to teach you to fish
It might be a little bit easier to visualize if you think of the values passed along in your workflow as a stack of playing cards. Some actions do something with the cards and then just pass them on, some take all of the cards, and others add cards to the stack. The Set Value of Variable action takes the current stack of cards (the results of any previous action(s)), assigns it to a variable that is named whatever you want to name it, and passes the stack on to the next action. The Get Value of Variable gets the value of one of your previously named variables and adds it to the stack. You can also use a previously named variable in input fields of various actions, such as locations to copy to. I'm not sure why you are getting the path to the desktop (unless that is where your workflow application is located), but here are some additional comments for my previously posted workflow:
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- the result of this action is a new folder, and the path to the folder is added to the current stack of cards (if any) and passed on to the next action
- since we just want the path to the new folder (and none of the previous cards), first we throw away any cards we may have (with the "ignore input" option) so that our results don't get mixed up.
4) Set Value of Variable
- same as (2) above, except that the value is now the path to the folder that got made in the previous action (3)
5) Ask for Finder Items (Type: files, Allow Multiple Selection)
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- the result of this action will be the paths to the items that were just copied, but since this is the end of the workflow it doesn't matter
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Does anyone know how to make Filter Finder Items filter for more than one extension? For example, if I want to make a script filter for MOV, AVI, and WMV?

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Pass input to Automator's "Ask for Finder Items"

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