Archives for April 2012

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Print PDF to FTP Server

In Mac OS X, it’s a snap to convert almost any document to PDF.  From the print dialog, simply choose Save as PDF... from the PDF popup button.  If you’ve done this before, then you may have noticed there are some other options in this popup, as well, such as Mail PDF.  These are print plugins, and, using Automator, it’s possible to create your own and add them to the list.  Suppose you upload PDFs to your FTP server on a regular basis, so you can share them with your family, coworkers, or whoever.  Every time you do this, you have to save your document somewhere as a PDF, launch the popular FTP client Transmit, connect to the server, and upload the PDF.  This is a perfect time to create a custom print plugin to do this for you.  Here’s how... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Convert Rich Text to Image

Your wife’s surprise birthday party is tomorrow.  You’ve prepared a top notch slideshow on your Mac using Keynote, and transferred it to your iPad.  Great!  Now you can present directly from the iPad.  There’s only one problem.  The fonts in your presentation are no longer appearing properly because the iPad doesn’t have all the same fonts your Mac does.  It looks like you might have to lug your Mac along too.  No, with Automator’s help, you can just replace the problem text with images.  Here’s how... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts & Workflows – Scaling Images in the Finder

There are tons of apps that allow you to manipulate images on your Mac.  iPhoto and Preview are two from Apple, and there are lots more available from the Mac App Store and third-party software vendors.  What you may not know, however, is that you don’t need a third-party app to do some basic image manipulations with your existing operating system.  Using Automator, you can create your own custom image processing plug-ins, which you can run right within the Finder.  [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Clean Up Your Desktop with Your Voice

I tend to keep a pretty uncluttered Desktop. I typically have only a handful of active files there at any given time, which I promptly remove when I'm done working with them. I strongly suspect, however, that I'm in the minority. Often, I see people with hundreds or even thousands of files on their Desktop. They truly work off of their Desktop, and this simply isn’t efficient. Locating files on a cluttered Desktop requires scrolling through tons of irrelevant files, moving icons around, searching, and more. Perhaps if Siri was on the Mac, she could help. Wouldn’t it be great if you could verbally instruct your Mac to clean things up for you? Well, with Speakable Items and AppleScript, you can. Here's how. [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Add Date to Files and Folders

Keeping files and folders organized on my Mac is essential to my productivity.  Folder structures and naming conventions are a big help, but I also need to ways to quickly locate meeting or phone call notes from last Tuesday, or the samples a client sent me for review last October.  One method I use is to add date prefixes to certain file and folder names.  This provides visual clues when I’m browsing for something, and also allows me to sort more easily.  While the methodology works, I don’t like having to keep typing the date over and over again.  Although it only takes a few seconds, it’s repetitive, and sometimes I enter a typo.  Since my time is extremely limited, those few seconds are also valuable to me.  To make life easier, I’ve created an Automator Service that appends a date prefix to files and folders in the Finder.  Here’s how you can do the same... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]