AppleScript error - The variable people is not defined.

Does it work if you substitute 'person' for 'people'?

When the script got compiled were pipe symbols (|) put around people and or vcard?

If so and you remove then does the script run?

tell application "Contacts"

set the clipboard topeople'svcard

do shell script "pbpaste > ~/Desktop/Contacts.vcf"

set the clipboard to ""

end tell

Open the script in the Applescript editor and run it. See if the vertical bars are added.

I ask because for some reason after I copied your code into the Applescript editor it put the bars around the two names which causes Applescript to interpret the names as variables not as arguments to Contacts. This caused the error. When I removed the bars and re-ran it it ran Ok, the bars weren't added back in.

No idea why I saw hat I saw but am curious to see if you are getting the same result.

Just tied it again and got the same result

set the clipboard to (|vcard| of |people|) as text

error "The variable people is not defined." number -2753 from "people"

when I removed the bars and run it it runs OK.

Note: If I add activate after the tell statement before compiling it, it compiles OK. Is it possible that before you started getting this problem you had Contacts open before running the script and now you do not?

I would not submit code that produced an error, and it did not in my AppleScript Editor when I ran it. The vcard was written to my Desktop. OS X 10.9.4.

Take a closer look at this post. With the Contact application running, it wrote my contacts into a vcard. Double-clicking the vcard triggered a prompt from Contacts asking me if I wanted to import these nn contacts. You may wish to change the path to documents folder to path to desktop for testing purposes.

Something is strange with this.

As a rule the tell application statement should be sufficient for Applescript to realize the terms in the tell block are from that application without actually activating the application (either by the active command or by having the application open before the script runs)

And the problem is not consistent for me. Just tried it again (selected your code, made an Applescript from it and this time it worked ok)

With I had more, glad you were able to work around the problem, but it definitely isn;t fixed. Can you think of anything that changed on your system at the time the problem first appeared?

I had this problem when I upgraded to 10.9.4. Rebuilding the launch services database fixed it.

-- script downloaded from macscripter.net

display dialog "The Finder must quit and will relaunch after the Launch Services rebuild is complete. The rebuild may take several minutes, during which time you should refrain from using any other apps." buttons {"Cancel", "Rebuild LS Database"} default button 2 with icon caution

ignoring application responses

tell application "Finder"

delay 2

quit

end tell

end ignoring

delay 5

tell application "System Events" to set running_applications_ to get name of every application process

if running_applications_ contains "Finder" then do shell script "killall Finder"

do shell script "/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.fr amework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user"

tell application "Finder"

delay 2

activate

end tell

tell me to activate

display dialog "The Launch Services rebuild is now complete." buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon note