Why does the Automator action "Speak Text" output the input instead of outputting spoken text?

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Level 1

38 points

Why does the Automator action "Speak Text" output the input instead of outputting spoken text?

Why does the Automator action "Speak Text" output the original text input instead of outputting the spoken text? Isn't the whole point of the action to speak text? Then why is the output unmodiifed copy of the original text? I want to save the audio file, not the original text! Apple doesn't even give you an option to save the audio. I have to bypass automator by using the command line utility "say". But I want to use Automator! Most of the time when I try to use Automator I run into these little problems so I end up using shell scripts instead.

There used to be a support category for Automator but I can't find it anymore. Can someone help me find it?

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Sep 18, 2012 2:28 PM

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Answer 1

mns579

Level 4

1,170 points

Sep 18, 2012 3:55 PM in response to MiniMe2

Try the Text to Audio File action.

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Answer 2

MiniMe2 Author

Level 1

38 points

Sep 18, 2012 6:09 PM in response to mns579

That worked. THANKS. I'm surprised at two things. (1) That the action names doesn't contain "speech" or "speak" which is why I couldn't find it, and also (2) that it accepts multiple files as input because the description seems to suggest it takes a single file only. I wasn't expecting it to work for that reason.

What I'm doing is creating a bunch of files (to create an addon for the game WoW) whose names are short sentences that I need to create individual (probably hundreds of) MP3 files for. This automator action creates AIFF files but I'm sure I can figure out how to use automator to convert them to MP3 files, as I've done that before. I'm very happy, you made my day.

Sorry I marked your answer as Helped instead of Answered. You did answer my question. I'll see if I can change it to Answered.

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