Since our app is only going to rename our files, I’m not going to bother preserving the originals, so select ‘Don’t Add.’ This action will create a copy of each file, and then apply any subsequent edits to the copy only. Automator will then prompt you to preserve the original files by adding a ‘Copy Finder items’ to your workflow.

At this point you’ll see a popup warning you that this action may change the original files.Find ‘Rename Finder Items’ in the side-menu and drag it into the editor.Since the whole point of this workflow is to rename multiple files at once, make sure the ‘Add Multiple Selection’ checkbox is selected.Whenever you include ‘Ask Finder for Items’ in your workflow, double-clicking the finished Automator app will launch a Finder window where you can select the files you want to edit. Drag ‘Ask Finder for Items’ into the editor.Select ‘Files and Folders’ from the left-hand menu.Make sure the ‘Actions’ button is selected (towards the upper-right of the Automator window).So why not let Automator do the hard work for you? Let’s use Automator to create an app that can rename a large number of files in one fell swoop.Ĭreate a new Automator app, and then complete the following steps: However, working your way through potentially hundreds of photos and renaming them one by one definitely isn’t my idea of fun! One of the most effective ways of quickly bringing order to a large number of photos, is to use a consistent naming convention, for example you might name your holiday snaps Tenerife, 2016-1, Tenerife, 2016-2, and so on. If you’re anything like me, then you love taking photos but hate organising them. There’s many situations where you might want to rename multiple files at once, but one of the most common has to be when you’ve attached your digital camera to your computer after taking a bunch of photos – and realise just how many files you have to sort through! Automator is all about choice and experimentation! 1. Some of these techniques will be interchangeable, so if there’s something you like about a particular workflow, then you can always try incorporating it into other workflows. To give you the best overview of what Automator is capable of, I’m going to explore as many different techniques as possible throughout this article. One of the most important things to note about Automator, is that there’s usually multiple ways of accomplishing the same goal. Keep dragging items from the different menus and dropping them into the editor, until you’ve created your perfect workflow. Depending on what items you drag into the editor, you’ll be able to make different tweaks to your workflow, for example if you drag ‘Copy Finder Items’ into the editor, the next step is specifying where you want Automator to copy these Finder items to. This appears on the right side of the Automator UI. To create a workflow, grab an item from this menu and drop it into the second part of the Automator user interface, which is… Select a category and a new menu will appear listing the various items that you can incorporate into your workflow.

On the left-hand side, you’ll find a menu containing all the different Automator categories. Once you’ve made your selection, you’ll be taken to the main Automator user interface, which is split into two halves:

How to use automator mac to edit a pdf