I have a spreadsheet file in apple's numbers that I use as a grade sheet. I can generate an individual student's report and email a pdf version of this report to the student. Is there anyway to automate this process to the entire spreadsheet?

Hi Matt,

Similar answer, as well. My first thought on reading the question was 'mail merge', as it was with Ed's question.

But since you're already generating the individual reports using Numbers, 'printing' those to a PDF file and attaching the file to an email message would seem a better route to go.

That should be doable using either Automator or AppleScript, but my expertise with either of those is about the same level as is was when I responded to Ed's question. I'll wish you luck, and leave this to the Automator or AppleScript experts.

Regards,

Barry

PS: I'd suggest you prepare a copy of the document with the names (and perhaps the marks/grades) replaced with anonymous ones. I suspect a look at the actual file will be necessary to get a handle on its structure.

B.

Message was edited by: Barry (Added PS)

I would suggest something like this:

have one page that has your student report, using the name field to pull up all relevant data from the raw data pages. (use different lookup functions based on that name entered). Then you could try to make an applescript that would make a list (variable to hold the list basically, not on a spreadsheet) of all the students from the raw data page, and then paste those into the name field one at a time, which would bring up the data for that student, and print each one.

Jason

AMattN wrote:

I want numbers to mail out the PDF files as well.

Matt,

That's not going to happen. After assembling a PDF you can mail individual pages separately from within Preview. It's still a manual operation.

Jerry

The Print function includes an option to email the "print" as a PDF. I do not know how to automate this selection butmaybe it can be done.

Another possiblilty is to copy the entire sheet (the one with the table to be printed) to the clipboard. When pasted into an email message, it pastes in as a PDF. It should be possible to automate the process of changing the person's name on the sheet (which, via formulas, will result in the the data for that person to appear on the sheet), selecting the sheet, creating an email message with the person's email addr and with the sheet attached, sending it, then repeating for the others. I'm not up to the task but it sounds possible.

Numbers wont do the email part, but since your already being steered in the direction of applescript, Applescript could do this as well as noted in this document:

Apple saying it can be done: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mail/2.0/en/ml1032.html

Website showing How to do it: http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.21/21.09/ScriptingMail/index.html

Jason