Automator in Lion not working as before in 10.6/10.5

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Automator in Lion not working as before in 10.6/10.5

Hai!

Asking Google it seems I am the only having problems with Automator post upgrade from 10.6.8 to 10.7.1.

I have a workflow used as a folder action that should print PDFs downloaded to the downloads folder and with a certain file naming scheme to a Dymo label printer. It worked flawlessly during 10.5 and 10.6. Now in 10.7 it is printed to the default printer of Lion (either the one set as default or the one used last, depending on preferences settings).

Looking at the "Print Finder Items.action" I am unable to select the printer to print to anymore. So now what?

The other issue I am having is that a Automator Workflow saved as an App shows different results when run standalone or in Automator itself:

A worklow managing certain informtion from my address book shows well results, while run in the Automator tool. Yet, when saved as an App, the action "Get Contact Information" looses its settings for which fields of a contact should be shown. It always shows only the default settingss, as when the action is added to the workflow. No changes to the selected addressbook fields nor to their sequence are saved, which can be seen, after re-opening the app in Automator.

Any one? Any clue?

Regards

Andi

Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Sep 15, 2011 1:24 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 22, 2012 9:01 PM in response to andipilz

Really, five months and no answers? I need this feature back too. **** I just sold a elaborate POS system after I showed the client what I could do with a little automation and printing things in exactly the way they needed. Demo'd on Snow Leopard and they just bought Lion iMacs.

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Answer 2

andipilz Author

Level 1

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Feb 29, 2012 4:58 AM in response to Whitney Johnson

Whitney, no, there is no answer from anyone.

I helped me by changing this action to a shell action and use CUPS's lpr command with its options to send a job to a specific printer. For the time being this serves my case, yet it is not user friendly (or programmer friendly) at all.

So I use the "execute Shell Command" action, taking the input of the action to the stdin. It executes the command 'lpr -P printer -' where the "-" (dash) takes stdin as file name.

Yet, I have another problem with another action (retrieving addressbook information) coming out of the box, that is not working either since lion as before and as still described.

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Answer 3

Mar 2, 2012 4:26 PM in response to andipilz

Hi Andi,

Just got done at aforementioned client and created this workaround that does allow you to set the printer in a workflow, or at least reset the default printer in a workflow.

Here is a screen shot of the beginning of a workflow:

The full AppleScript text is:

------

on run {input, parameters}

tell application "Printer Setup Utility"

set the_printer to the current printer

set the_name to the name of the_printer

if the_name is not "Epson" then

set the_count to the count of printers

repeat with x from 1 to the_count

if the name of printer x is "Epson" then

set the current printer to printer x

end if

end repeat

end if

quit

end tell

tell application "Finder" to print file input

return input

end run

------

Change "Epson" to the name of your printer.

For you AppleScriptors, yes there are more elegant shorter solutions but every one I tried failed but this one.

I created these as "Print Plugins".

But, of course, just as you kill one dragon another one pops up. The Watermark PDF File which works perfectly in Leopard is broken in Lion. Known problem apparently.

Apple is making so much money I guess they feel they can get sloppy. Too bad.

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Answer 4

bradske

Level 1

8 points

May 14, 2012 7:29 AM in response to andipilz

The other issue I am having is that a Automator Workflow saved as an App shows different results when run standalone or in Automator itself:

A worklow managing certain informtion from my address book shows well results, while run in the Automator tool. Yet, when saved as an App, the action "Get Contact Information" looses its settings for which fields of a contact should be shown. It always shows only the default settingss, as when the action is added to the workflow. No changes to the selected addressbook fields nor to their sequence are saved, which can be seen, after re-opening the app in Automator.

I am having this exact same issue with the Get Contact Information action. It works fine in Automator but when I save it as a service and run it, it outputs all the default fields and not the ones I checked.

Does anybody know of a fix for this?

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Answer 5

andipilz Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 12:51 AM in response to bradske

In the meantime I filed a bug report with Apple, but the only answer I got, that the issue was already exisiting under a different bug report number, but which I cannot access to double check on the issue.

Having AppleScript embeded as mentioned here for other issues I have with Automator was not really a success story for me.

SO? No updates on Automator? Will it have the same fate than FrontRow ...? 😕

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