Saving output from PDFs merged using Automator

automator

Using Automator, I tried to create a simple application, but I don’t know how to move ahead. I want to combine PDFs into a single file. The current workflow is:

Ask for Finder Items
Combine PDF Pages
?

What should I do to ask for a menu to save the combined PDF using a specified name?

Best Answer

When working with Automator workflows, it’s always good to check hat an action takes as its input and what it returns as output. Usually, this is indicated in the action’s description (accessible either in the bottom left below the action browser, or by clicking on “description” in the action’s bottom row. The actual output when running the action can also be checked (by clicking “result” in the bottom row of the action).

In your case, checking will show the “Combine PDF Pages” returns a PDF Document file. This file can be processed by any Automator action that can handle files in general (for file operations) or PDF files (for further editing). A look in the “Finder” category of Automator will show you likely candidates:

Move Finder Items will move the file to a target folder of your choice. You can set a fixed one, or tick “Show this action when running the workflow” in “options” (bottom row again) to select each time you run the workflow. This action, again, returns a PDF Document, which
Rename Finder Items will rename a file. As the action returns a PDF Document, you can daisy chain rename actions with different settings, for instance to give it a selectable base name (choose “rename single item” and tick the show option), add a date stamp (add another actions et to append the date) and a time stamp (same procedure, now with the time).

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Merging pdfs with automator

I didn't really test this, but you could use a shell script instead.

#!/bin/bash

join="/System/Library/Automator/Combine PDF Pages.action/Contents/Resources/join.py"
date=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d')
last=$(ls ~/Desktop/$date*.pdf 2> /dev/null | tail -n1 | sed -E 's/.* 0*(.*)\.pdf$/\1/g' || 0)

cd ~/Documents/Scanned/
for f in scanf*.pdf; do
    ((last++))
    output="$HOME/Desktop/$date $(printf %03d $last).pdf"
    python "$join" -o "$output" "$f" "${f/scanf/scanb}"
    osascript -e 'on run {f}
tell app "Finder" to set label index of (posix file f as alias) to 2
end' "$output"
done

How to search PDFs and extract matching pages with Automator

I realise this is a year after you asked the question but I liked the challenge. So, in summary this is how I would accomplish this...

For every PDF in folder, convert it to Text.
Use a perl command to search the text files for keyword and return the page number(s).
Use command line tool to extract page(s) from PDF.
Merge extracted pages.

You can do the first part easily enough with applescript/automator.

The perl command to get the page numbers is:

perl -ne 'print "$1$2" if /blah/ .. /--- Page (\d+) ---(\n)/'

The command tool to use to extract pages from PDF file can be found at users.skynet.be/tools/

Finally to merge the single pages can be done with automator or the above tools as well.

Hope this helps.

Best Answer

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Merging pdfs with automator

How to search PDFs and extract matching pages with Automator

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