Using AppleScript to find and move text within a TextEdit document.

The goal is to do massive restructuring of data within a text edit file that requires a great deal of repetative operations using find text. The process is to use find to locate the item, exit Find at the location in which the item resides, go to the beginning of the line, select the whole line, cut, use find to relocate to the new location, exit Find at the new location, go to the beginning of the line, and paste repeating the process until all the data is restructured. The only problem is that I cannot exit Find using the "Done" button which would put the cursor at the right spot to begin the move. Searching the internet, I found:
click button "Done" in scroll area 1
however, that results in:
error "System Events got an error: Can’t get scroll area 1." number -1728 from scroll area 1
Searching the internet has not turned up any other method. Anyone that can help?

You can use find, something like:
find /dir -name "*.jpg" -exec mv {} dirnew/ \;
man find for the details...

Similar Messages

Using applescript for Find and Replace All in Pages 2.0

i saw that Pages 2.0 is scriptable
i try to create a script for merge use to find and replace all occurence of a certain string using a script but Pages doesn't seems to respond to "Find" even using "System Events"
how can i do to use this function with a script
Thanx for any help
S.B.
ibook G3 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

OK, here's another example. This one gets the text as a string and uses the offset property to find "[", presuming it to be a merge delimiter. (Pages' text doesn't support "offset of").
One failing of this scheme is that the offsets are incorrect if you have inline objects (pictures, shapes, tables, etc.). While it is probably possible to compensate for them, that's a trickier proposition.
<PRE>-- Example merge replacements:
property mergeText : {"[name]", "John Smith", "[address]", "1234 Anystreet"}
on lookup(mergeWord)
set theCount to count of mergeText
repeat with x from 1 to theCount by 2
if item x of mergeText = mergeWord then
return item (x + 1) of mergeText
end if
end repeat
-- If merge field is not found, delete it (replace it with the empty string)
return ""
end lookup
tell application "Pages"
repeat
tell body text of document 1
-- Get text as a string so that "offset of" can be used.
set allText to it as string
set startOffset to offset of "[" in allText
if (startOffset = 0) then
exit repeat
end if
set endOffset to offset of "]" in allText
select (text from character startOffset to character endOffset)
end tell
set mergeWord to contents of selection
tell me to lookup(mergeWord)
set replacement to result
set selection to replacement
if (replacement is "") then
-- Get rid of extra whitespace (space or return)
-- Do it in a "try" block to handle edge cases at start or end of text.
try
set theSel to (get selection)
set ch1 to character before theSel
set ch2 to character after theSel
if ((ch1 is " " or ch1 is return) and (ch2 is " " or ch2 is return)) then
select character after theSel
delete selection
end if
end try
end if
end repeat
end tell</PRE>
Titanium PowerBook Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Using AppleScript to find specific text in mail message?

I'm new to scripting, and I'm a bit lost on this one...
Is there any way to use AppleScript to find a file name from within the body of a mail message so it can be used later in the script?
Specifically, I want to use AppleScript to "read" the content of a mail message and look for a paragraph that says "Filename: MyFileName" so I can set "MyFileName" as a variable. (There will always be a paragraph that begins with "Filename: " in this particular email message.)
This will part of a larger script that uses Fetch to download "MyFileName" from our FTP server.
Thanks in advance for any ideas - I'm struggling with this one.
Andy Gill

Ok, red_menace above me had a shorter and more elegant solution to the question, I'm adding this just for another example.
To solve your problem I'd make a mail rule that looked for any messages with "Filename:" in them (along with whatever criteria you wanted, like sender, domain, etc). The mail rule would execute the Applescript. My assumption is that the "Filename:foobar" text could be anywhere in the email, not necessarily the first thing in a paragraph, so I had to parse it differently.
The results end up in a datalist, (theFilename {} ) that you can parse later to collect all filenames found in whatever messages were processed.
I realize this could be cleaner, hope it's not hard to follow, but I did it really fast. It works flawlessly for me, picking out the name of the file no matter where in the email it appears.
using terms from application "Mail"
on perform mail action with messages theSelectedMessages for rule theRule
repeat with aCounter from 1 to count theSelectedMessages
set theMessage to item aCounter of theSelectedMessages
set theContent to content of theMessage
set theWords to every word of theContent
set theFilename to {}
set tid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ":"
repeat with thisLoop in theWords
try
if (text item 1 of thisLoop) is "Filename" then
set end of theFilename to (text item 2 of thisLoop)
-- rest of your logic goes here the display is just to show it finds the filename, take it out!
display dialog theFilename ¬
buttons {"OK"}
end if
end try
end repeat
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tid
end repeat
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from
Message was edited by: stephen.bradley Typos for the win!

Use VBA and Excel to open Dreamweaver HTML (CS5), find and replace text, save and close

I wish to use VBA and Excel to programmatically open numbered Dreamweaver HTML (CS5) and find and replace text in the code view of these files, save and close them.
I have 5000 associations between Find: x0001 and Replace: y0001 in an Excel sheet.
I have the VBA written but do not know how to open, close and save the code view of the ####.html files. Please ... and thank you...
[email protected]

This is actually the code view of file ####.html that I wish to find and replace programmatically where #### is a four digit number cataloguing each painting.... In 1995 I thought this was clever... maybe not so clever now :>)) Thank you for whatever you can do Rob!
!####.jpg!
h2. "Name####"
Oils on acrylic foundation commercial canvas - . xx X xx (inches) Started
Back of the Painting In Progress </p> </body> </html>
Warmest regards,
Phil the Forecaster, http://philtheforecaster.blogspot.ca/ and http://phils-market.blogspot.ca/

Lost the paste and move text function in Pages '09 also suddenly can't open .doc or .docx files

A few days ago I lost the ability to open .doc or .docx files in Pages '09 version 4.3.
Today I find that I can not paste or move text within Pages.
I updated everything yesterday and still no luck.
Help....

A Google search using the terms <document "could not be opened" iwork"> turns up two possible solutions:
Pages '09 refuses to create/open existing doc after Lion upgrade
Re: The document “navidad.numbers” could not be opened.
The first discussion's solution is to delete/reinstall/update iWork. The second is to edit the underlying code within the document and remove any Unicode characters.
I recommend you go with solution no. 1. Use Yvan Koenig's script to delete iWork completely (see below), then reinstall and update iWork before attempting to open a Word document. Then let us know how you went.
Go to https://public.me.com/koenigyvan
Choose For iWork > iWork '09 > uninstall iWork '09.zip
Download Uninstall iWork '09.zip, decompress it, open it in AppleScript Editor and click the Run button

Folder action to find and replace text and change line feeds

I want to use a folder action to find and replace text and change Mac carriage returns to DOS line feeds inside text files.
The text to be replaced is: "/Users/wim/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Music" (without the quotes)
This text has to be removed (i.e. replaced by an empty string)
The text occurs many times within each file.
The files are playlists exported from iTunes in the M3U format (which are text files). They contain Mac carriage returns. These need to be changed to DOS line feeds.
I have found the following two perl commands to achieve this:
To find and replace text: perl -pi -w -e 's/THIS/THAT/g;' *.txt
To change carriage returns to line feeds: perl -i -pe 's/\015/\015\012/g' mac-file
I know that it's possible to make a folder action with Automator that executes a shell script.
What I want to do is drop the exported playlists in M3U format in a folder so that the folder action will remove the right text and change the carriage returns.
My questions are:
Is it possible to make a folder action that executes command line commands instead of shell scripts?
What is the correct syntax for the two commands when used in a folder action shell script? Especially, how do I escape the slashes (/) in the string to be removed?
Thanks for your help

Ok, I've include an applescript to run a shell command. The applesript command quoted form makes a string that will end up as a single string on the bash command line. Depending on what you want to do, you may need multiple string on the bash command lines. I've included some information on folder actions.
It is easier to diagnose problems with debug information. I suggest adding log statements to your script to see what is going on. Here is an example.
    Author: rccharles
    For testing, run in the Script Editor.
      1) Click on the Event Log tab to see the output from the log statement
      2) Click on Run
    For running shell commands see:
    http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2002/tn2065.html
on run
    -- Write a message into the event log.
    log " --- Starting on " & ((current date) as string) & " --- "
    -- debug lines
    set desktopPath to (path to desktop) as string
    log "desktopPath = " & desktopPath
    set unixDesktopPath to POSIX path of desktopPath
    log "unixDesktopPath = " & unixDesktopPath
    set quotedUnixDesktopPath to quoted form of unixDesktopPath
    log "quoted form is " & quotedUnixDesktopPath
    try
        set fromUnix to do shell script "ls -l " & quotedUnixDesktopPath
        display dialog "ls -l of " & quotedUnixDesktopPath & return & fromUnix
    on error errMsg
        log "ls -l error..." & errMsg
    end try
end run
How to set up a folder action.
1) right click on folder. click on Enable folder actions
2) Place script in
/Library/Scripts/Folder Actions Scripts
3) right click on folder. click on attach folder action
pick your script.
Create a new folder on the desktop & try.
You can put multiple folder actions on a folder. There are other ways of doing this.
Here is my test script:
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving dropped_items
    repeat with dropped_item_ref in dropped_items
       display dialog "dropped files is " & dropped_item_ref & " on folder " & this_folder
    end repeat
end adding folder items to
How to make the text into an AppleScript program.
Start the AppleScript Editor
/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor.app
In Snow Leopard it's at: /Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor
Copy the script text to the Applescript editor.
Note: The ¬ is typed as option+return. ption+return is the Applescript line continuation characters.
You may need to retype these characters.
Save the text to a file as an script and do not check any of the boxes below.

How do I move text within a cell down in "Numbers" please?

I am trying to move text within a cell down in Pages. I use one cell as a topic and then add text in the next row of a cell. It may seem strange to some but I have been doing it for years in Excel. Here is the best example I can give here:
Customer
Customer Notes
ABC Company
Imagine a long row of text here and I want to start a new line of text below this one without (within the same cell)
Text would continue here but still within the same cell (I use to be able to just hit return in excel)
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks so much! ;-)
Thanks so much!

Thanks so much Wayne... I spent quite a while searching for this to no avail lol.Have a great day!

Find and Replace text string in HTML

Opps... I hope this forum is not just for Outlook. My Html files reside on my hard-drive. I am looking for VBA code to open specified file names ####File.html and then find and replace text strings within the html for example "####Name" replaced
with "YYYYY"
I drive the "####File.html" names and the find and replace text strings from an Excel sheet. I am an artist and this Sub would give me time to paint instead of find and replace text. Thank you!
[email protected]

Hello Phil,
The current forum is for developers and Outlook related programming questions. That's why I'd suggest hiring anybody for developing the code for you. You may find freelancers, for example. Try googling for any freelance-related web sites and asking such
questions there.
If you decide to develop an Outlook macro on your own, the
Getting Started with VBA in Outlook 2010 article is a good place to start from.

Is there a way to find and replace prices in an Indesign document from a CSV file?

Is there a way to find and replace prices in an Indesign document from a CSV file. Currenty I have a catalog with codes and prices in tables. I need to find a way to look up the code (and new price) in the CSV file and overwrite the price in the current table with the new price. Does anyone know of a script to run this quickly?

Hi,
Try this
1) with all the images showing, got to Find -> By caption or Note
2) enter the caption you are looking for Image Description and click on OK
It should display all the ones with that caption
3) select a few images as a test
4) go to Edit -> Add caption to selected items
5) if you want to blank out the captions just check the box to replace the caption and click on ok
6) You will need to confirm the blank captions
You could use a similar procedure to change the caption to something else.
Good luck
Brian

I am using Adobe XI Pro and in various parts of the document there is brown / biege lettering when on the document it shows as black. My printer guy has been in and checked it out top to bottom and that part is fine. I have tried to print the same docum

I am using Adobe XI Pro and in various parts of the document there is brown / biege lettering when on the document it shows as black. My printer guy has been in and checked it out top to bottom and that part is fine. I have tried to print the same document and it comes out fine. Any ideas ? Using Windows 7 Service Pack 1

Sorry my bad. I have tried to print the same document on another printer and all the formatting is fine.

How do you find and replace "within selected text" in a textedit document (version 1.8, mountain lion)

In the textedit version on Snow leopard it was possible to search and replace within a peice of selected text only i.e. not the entire file. This was a very useful feature because you could select a paragraph and replace all occurences of word1 with word2 within that paragraph only! This feature appears to be missing from the mountain lion version of textedit (version 1.8). Or can anyone tell me how to do it ... ?

Having 46 people view a post without replying is not unusual. Some people look at a question to see if it's something they'd like to know the answer to, and then come back when it has eventually been answered.
I'm not sure if you need to escape forward slashes in Dreamweaver's Find and Replace dialog box, but I normally do because both JavaScript and PHP normally use forward slashes as delimiters to mark the beginning and end of the regex like this:
var pattern = /[A-Z]{4}/; // JavaScript
$pattern = '/[A-Z]{4}/'; // PHP
When a forward slash appears inside the regex, you need to escape it with a backslash to avoid confusion with the closing delimiter.
As you have worked out, a capturing group is created by wrapping part of the regex in parentheses.
If you want to match exactly 38 characters, you can use [\S\s]{38}. That includes spaces, newline characters, symbols, everything.
If you're trying to find everything between two tags, you can do this:
(<\/tag_name>)([^<]+)
The closing tag is captured as $1 and everything up to the next opening tag is captured as $2.
Learning regular expressions is not easy. I don't claim to be an expert, but I enjoy the challenge of trying to solve them. If you're interested in regular expressions, there are several books published by O'Reilly. "Mastering Regular Expressions" is the ultimate authority, but it's a difficult read (not because it's badly written, but because of the complexity of the subject). "Regular Expressions Cookbook" is very good. There's also a new "Introducing Regular Expressions", but I haven't read it.

Using Automator and Applescript to search and move files to flash drive

I've used applescript and automator to do simple tasks like watch folders and move files and rename files, but that is about the extent. I am wondering if it is possible to set up a automator service or app that will do several things.
When a flash drive is plugged it, it will ask for a file to be searched for, then it will search a predetermined directory for files with the word or number in them and then it will copy the found files to the mounted flash drive.
Any help would be greatly appriciated!
Thanks!

As a start, you can use launchd to run a script when a volume is mounted:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
          <key>Label</key>
          <string>com.tonyt.LaunchOnVolMount</string>
          <key>ProgramArguments</key>
          <array>
                    <string>LaunchOnVolMount.sh</string>
          </array>
          <key>QueueDirectories</key>
          <array/>
          <key>StartOnMount</key>
          <true/>
          <key>WatchPaths</key>
          <array/>
</dict>
</plist>
You can then have the LaunchOnVolMount.sh script perform the tasks you need.
You can incorporate Applescript within the Bash script with osascript:
#!/bin/bash
answer=$( osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to display dialog "What file do you want to search for?" default answer "" ' )
echo $answer
I beleive that you can also call an Applescript from launchd

[Forum FAQ] How to find and replace text strings in the shapes in Excel using Windows PowerShell

Windows PowerShell is a powerful command tool and we can use it for management and operations. In this article we introduce the detailed steps to use Windows PowerShell to find and replace test string in the
shapes in Excel Object.
Since the Excel.Application
is available for representing the entire Microsoft Excel application, we can invoke the relevant Properties and Methods to help us to
interact with Excel document.
The figure below is an excel file:
Figure 1.
You can use the PowerShell script below to list the text in the shapes and replace the text string to “text”:
$text = “text1”,”text2”,”text3”,”text3”
$Excel
= New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$Excel.visible = $true
$Workbook
= $Excel.workbooks.open("d:\shape.xlsx")
#Open the excel file
$Worksheet
= $Workbook.Worksheets.Item("shapes")
#Open the worksheet named "shapes"
$shape = $Worksheet.Shapes
# Get all the shapes
$i=0
# This number is used to replace the text in sequence as the variable “$text”
Foreach ($sh in $shape){
$sh.TextFrame.Characters().text
# Get the textbox in the shape
$sh.TextFrame.Characters().text =
$text[$i++]
#Change the value of the textbox in the shape one by one
$WorkBook.Save()
#Save workbook in excel
$WorkBook.Close()
#Close workbook in excel
[void]$excel.quit()
#Quit Excel
Before invoking the methods and properties, we can use the cmdlet “Get-Member” to list the available methods.
Besides, we can also find the documents about these methods and properties in MSDN:
Workbook.Worksheets Property (Excel):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff835542(v=office.15).aspx
Worksheet.Shapes Property:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff821817(v=office.15).aspx
Shape.TextFrame Property:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff839162(v=office.15).aspx
TextFrame.Characters Method (Excel):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff195027(v=office.15).aspx
Characters.Text Property (Excel):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff838596(v=office.15).aspx
After running the script above, we can see the changes in the figure below:
Figure 2.
Please click to vote if the post helps you. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thank you for the information, but does this thread really need to be stuck to the top of the forum?
If there must be a sticky, I'd rather see a link to a page on the wiki that has links to all of these ForumFAQ posts.
EDIT: I see this is no longer stuck to the top of the forum, thank you.
Don't retire TechNet! -
(Don't give up yet - 13,085+ strong and growing)

Find and replace text in multiple Photoshop files?

Hi there,
Let us say I have six Photoshop files: 1.psd, 2.psd, ..., 6.psd. All of these files contain the word “LoremIpsum” in random text layers, within each document. Is there a way I can search for “LoremIpsum” in all documents and replace it with “Dolor Sit Amet”, all in one go? This is just an example, I need to replace various words, not just one.
I have tried "batch find and replace" software (including powerful tools like Power Grep) but they do not work with psd files… Is there a javascript of external plugin for this kind of task?
Thanks!

You’re welcome, advice given here is free.
If you want to donate something nonetheless you could do so over at
http://ps-scripts.com/bb/
Many of the same people used to contribute there as here and I for one have benefitted considerably from their generous advice on Scripting issues.
A Script can read (or create) txt files, but I do not have a lot of experience with this.
This might work (amend the line »var theTexts = readPref ("….txt", false);« according to your txt-file’s path):
// replace text elements in type layers;
// 2013, use it at your own risk;
#target photoshop
if (app.documents.length > 0) {
          for (var n = 0; n < app.documents.length; n++) {
                    app.activeDocument = app.documents[n];
                    app.activeDocument.suspendHistory("replace text", "main()")
// the opertation;
function main () {
          var myDocument = app.activeDocument;
          var theTexts = readPref ("….txt", false);
          var theArray1 = theTexts.slice(0, Math.round(theTexts.length/2));
          var theArray2 = theTexts.slice(Math.round(theTexts.length/2), theTexts.length);
          alert (theArray1.join("\n")+"\n\n\n"+theArray2.join("\n"))
          for (var b = 0; b < theArray1.length; b++) {
                    replaceText (theArray1[b], theArray2[b])
////// reoplace text //////
function replaceText (replaceThis, replaceWith) {
// =======================================================
var idreplace = stringIDToTypeID( "replace" );
    var desc22 = new ActionDescriptor();
    var idnull = charIDToTypeID( "null" );
        var ref3 = new ActionReference();
        var idPrpr = charIDToTypeID( "Prpr" );
        var idreplace = stringIDToTypeID( "replace" );
        ref3.putProperty( idPrpr, idreplace );
        var idTxLr = charIDToTypeID( "TxLr" );
        var idOrdn = charIDToTypeID( "Ordn" );
        var idAl = charIDToTypeID( "Al " );
        ref3.putEnumerated( idTxLr, idOrdn, idAl );
    desc22.putReference( idnull, ref3 );
    var idUsng = charIDToTypeID( "Usng" );
        var desc23 = new ActionDescriptor();
        var idfind = stringIDToTypeID( "find" );
        desc23.putString( idfind, replaceThis );
        var idreplace = stringIDToTypeID( "replace" );
        desc23.putString( idreplace, replaceWith );
        var idcheckAll = stringIDToTypeID( "checkAll" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idcheckAll, true );
        var idFwd = charIDToTypeID( "Fwd " );
        desc23.putBoolean( idFwd, true );
        var idcaseSensitive = stringIDToTypeID( "caseSensitive" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idcaseSensitive, false );
        var idwholeWord = stringIDToTypeID( "wholeWord" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idwholeWord, false );
        var idignoreAccents = stringIDToTypeID( "ignoreAccents" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idignoreAccents, true );
    var idfindReplace = stringIDToTypeID( "findReplace" );
    desc22.putObject( idUsng, idfindReplace, desc23 );
executeAction( idreplace, desc22, DialogModes.NO );
////// read prefs file //////
function readPref (thePath, binary) {
if (File(thePath).exists == true) {
    var file = File(thePath);
    file.open("r");
    if (binary == true) {file.encoding= 'BINARY'};
    var theText = file.read();
    file.close();
    return String(theText).split(",")
In this case the comma is used to split the text into Strings in Arrays, if your search/replace texts include commas you could use something else, I guess.

How do I find and replace text in PHP files?

How can I in CS3 make sitewide changes to the text in PHP pages without changing variable names etc that have the same name?
For example if I have an installation of a PHP forum and I want to change every instance of the word 'forum' to 'message board'...
If I used the 'inside tag' search with " as the tag, then if "" contained a variable called 'forum' it would also be changed and therefore corrupt the code....
Is there a simple way around this?
Thanks!
I'm using CS3 on Windows Vista.

It looks like you're trying to find and replace source code, so you may be able to look at the various places that are looked at when finding and uncheck the ones that don't apply.
But, if it's all source code then that won't help. One thing that may work is to expand the search option - for example if the work "forum" that you're wanting to change it preceded by another word, or character or something that sets it apart, then do you find on that. You can expand that search phrase as far out in either direction that you need to to make it different, if of course that is practical in your situation.
The only other way I can think of is to somehow create an exception rule, but I'm not sure if that's possible or how to do it.

Using AppleScript to find and move text within a TextEdit document.

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