I previously mentioned that I store all my receipts on my iDisk with a naming style of:

yyyy_mm_dd_NAME_OF_FILE.pdf

To get the PDF on to the iDisk I had to say, Print, then “Save as PDF…” and I would manually give it the name with the date prefixed and fumble my way over to iDisk/Documents. This morning I learned of the wonderful thing that is “PDF Services” (found via being curious and spotlighting for “Save PDF to”). What I found was that you can just plop an applescript or automator workflow to ~/Library/PDF Services and it’ll show up in that list. Very slick. So now I’ve got a “Save To iDisk” script that asks for a name of the file. The script then prefixes today’s date, appends .pdf and stores it in my iDisk/Documents folder. Delicious. This will save me at least two or three minutes every month.

In case you might like such a script, grab 01. Save To iDisk.zip and put the .scpt file in your ~/Library/PDF Services and you’re good to go (the 01. is so that it shows up first in alphabetically sorted drop down list). I always have my iDisk mounted and I also mirror it (not sure if that makes a difference). Anyway, in the script, change the string “iDisk:Documents” to where ever you want to store your files.

Enjoy!

p.s. I also did this with an automator workflow but I couldn’t figure out how to get it to ask me for a name everytime. This is a deal killer since often times the documents I’m printing have undescriptive common names like “Order Confirmation” and I want them to be more like “250GB Drive from NewEgg”. If someone knows how to get the automator workflow to ask for a string and use that string as the file name I’d love to know. Regardless, here’s the workflow: Save PDF on iDisk.workflow.zip

Disclaimer: I’m neither a scripting guru nor an automator wizard. Use at your own risk (and correct me if you find things wrong).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 7:11 am and is filed under Other, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.