terrytas
Level 1 (4 points)
Mac OS X

Q: Automator copy/duplicate problems

Hi,

 

I have made a workflow for copying, renaming and sorting raw files with the following functions:

 

Get/Copy/Rename either CR2 or NEF files from a CF card onto a desktop folder. It then launches Adobe DNG convertor and pauses while files are converted to DNG format. It then finds and moves the CR2/NEF files to another folder, gets and replaces the folder name and finally gets a finder item and duplicates. The last step ensures that the target folder at the start of the workflow remains static.

 

It all works fine except that it duplicates all files and folders which have been asked for so I end up with a renamed folder plus a copy and duplicate renamed CR2 files as well as the single folder that I want duplicated.

 

I tried duplicating the folder at the start of the workflow but this caused other more difficult (sorry I can’t remember how) problems. I can see that the Duplicate Finder Items is working on all 4 Get/Find requests while I only want the final Get Specified Finder Item to duplicate.

 

OS is 10.10.3

Any assistance greatly appreciated.

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Sep 1, 2016 8:20 PM

Close
terrytas

Q: Automator copy/duplicate problems

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by red_menace,

    red_menace red_menace Sep 1, 2016 8:56 PM in response to terrytas
    Level 6 (15,519 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 1, 2016 8:56 PM in response to terrytas

    I can't make much sense out of your description, so without seeing the exact workflow I can only guess.

     

    It sounds like you are not managing the input items to your Automator actions.  The output of any given action is the input to the following action (think of it like passing a deck of cards around a table), so if you are doing something with a group of items and later get more items, they will be added together, which can result in duplicate items.

     

    The solution is to use an action's "Ignore this action's input" option to clear previous results as needed.  For example, you could perform a filter for one type of file, then clear the results and perform a filter for another type of file, and finally clear those results before asking for files to duplicate.