jebus197 Posted January 2, 2010 Share Posted January 2, 2010 Hi if I wanted to use automator so that I could right click and have the option to open a new Microsoft Word 2008 document open in whatever the current open finder window might be, could I do this - and if so how? To be clear the action I want is to 'create a new MS word document here' and then open this new document ready for editing. Other tasks I would like to be able to achieve is printing a folder's contents to a text file (or to a terminal if this isn't possible), by right clicking on it and selecting 'get contents', and also to be able to select a file by right clicking on it and selecting "send to" in order to be presented with a submenu of other contextual menu options, such as 'mail recipient', 'bluetooth device', 'remote share' etc. Can any of this be done? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PyX Posted January 2, 2010 Share Posted January 2, 2010 (edited) Snow Leopard brought up a lot of changes to Automator and Services apparently. I don't know what, as I never really used Automator to create Services before. So you might as well check if you are running Snow Leopard. If not, maybe the procedure still works under Leopard, I got no clue. Here's how to do it : 1. Open Automator 2. File > New > Service 3. At the beginning of the workflow of you script, select "No Input", and then "Finder" 4. Search for "Word" in the actions given by Automator 5. There will be an action called "Create Word Document", drag it on the right, in the workflow of the script you want to make 6. File > Save 7. Name it "Create Word Document" The Service created will then be stored in /Users/username/Library/Services/ Delete it at your will, if you ever get tired of it :) As for putting it in the Right-Click-Menu, I'm not sure on how to do this. I did it once, but the input was a "File or Folder", so when I selected a file or folder and right-clicked on it, my service would show. Edit : As for getting the content of a folder, I think you need to add some AppleScript into a Service in Automator. I have no idea how AppleScript works, but I know it's doable. Edited January 2, 2010 by PsykX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PyX Posted January 2, 2010 Share Posted January 2, 2010 The more that I think about it, the more I think there's a bug with Snow Leopard, because when we fire up the Contextual Menu (Right-Click), Services that apply should be there with their icons. I had this in the beta builds, not it's gone. So either Apple got rid of it (bad move) or it's a bug they still haven't fixed (bad move, but better). Can anyone confirm this if they've removed it or not? To do this : 1. Open Safari 2. Select some text in a webpage 3. Right-Click on the text If there's a menu item called "Create a new note" or something, then the fact that I don't have it in MY contextual menu means it's a bug, and maybe it only affects the french mode of OS X, I don't know. If nobody has it, then they probably got rid of it... Or maybe there's a way to configure it??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts