Open a Numbers spreadsheet with AppleScript

Well... As expected the AppleScripted export fails too unless:

1. The Numbers document is already open
2. You have already performed the export manually in Numbers once

Given that these two conditions are met, an AppleScripted export will be successful provided the document remains open and Numbers remains running. Close the document or quit Numbers and none of the scripting will work again until the above two conditions are met.

I appreciate the suggestion. It didn't help though. The script is not being run through the Script Editor and even when it was, the paths were the problem as Hiroto mentioned.

Thanks Hiroto!! This worked. I've used AppleScript for literally decades but I'd forgotten about the POSIX file object. Too much shell scripting in the last few years, I guess.

Using the POSIX file object both for the open and for the export worked perfectly. No Sandbox violations. It also works when running the script from a shell script through osascript (which is what I needed anyway).

tell application "Numbers" set my_doc to open ("/Users/latcarf/Desktop/Test.numbers") as POSIX file tell my_doc to export to (("/Users/latcarf/Desktop/Test") as POSIX file) as CSV end tell

Thanks for the gentle reminder of my forgotten knowledge. I used to know this. I'm getting old.

<duplicate post>

Yep. Thanks. I abandoned HFS paths after OS 9.

When OS X came out, professionally and personally I started using shell scripting more than AppleScript. After that, when I needed to use AppleScript, it was usually a small part of a larger system predominantly built in shell, PERL, or other scripts. It became inconvenient to use HFS (colon delimited) paths when everything else was using UNIX/POSIX style paths. In addition, the need to know the hard drive name was also inconvenient. After the POSIX file class came out in Standard Additions, I went with that and never looked back to HFS paths. Now HFS paths just feel anachronistic.

Indeed, this question came from the need to use AppleScript as a small part of larger system. using shell and python scripting. The AppleScript is invoked via osascript in a 'here document' and since the other scripts pass off the paths, it's just easier to use UNIX paths throughout. In fact, one of the reasons I had this question was my surprise that AppleScript still doesn't handle UNIX path strings! (Well, that and the strange sandbox violations caused by using the path strings)

I've not used AppleScript for a few years an have forgotten alot of it. In decades past I sometimes used AppleScript exclusively but those days are long gone and over the years AppleScript has become less and less necessary to accomplish my tasks.

I don't recall seeing that document before. Thank you for the reference and the extra effort! 🙂