Learning AppleScript for Beginners » AppleScript

Formatting and Editing Text Objects with Word 2008

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:08:14 +0000

While Microsoft has its own scripting language (Visual Basic for Applications or ‘VBA’) to do all (most) of the same things as presented here, it is rather clunky and difficult to use compared with the more natural syntax of AppleScript.

Here we will look at some of the most necessary scripting elements for Word 2008 through [...]

Using Aliases and POSIX Paths

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:18:53 +0000

Over the time that I have been writing AppleScripts, I have found that one of the most difficult, if not frustrating, tasks of writing scripts is referencing files by path so that they can be accessed by other applications.

As you’ll see below, creating a reference that is understandable by the Finder is fairly simple (not [...]

Using Info Window Data to Write Scripts

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:33:43 +0000

In the initial section of this post, I leave the AppleScript code formatted as it would appear in the Script Editor pane to show that keywords, statements and other expressions that appear in blue in the Script Editor are part of the AppleScript language and syntax and knowing that is helpful when writing scripts.

Let’s start [...]

AppleScript for Sending Email with Apple Mail

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:26:42 +0000

This is a very straightforward script to send data to Apple’s Mail application. There isn’t really anything difficult here. It should suffice to note here the AppleScript terms and expressions used here that are unique to the Mail application. You’ll often find that an application has, along with the standard terms that are used by [...]

Concatenation or Parsing and Editing of Text Strings

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:34:31 +0000

In this section we deal with various methods to extract different parts of text from lists and other text and at the end, how to put it all together to make a new text string. This is sort of lengthy, but it is pretty easy to follow,

First, to extract text from a list. Both of [...]

An AppleScript for iTunes Playlists

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:53:49 +0000

Here is a simple AppleScript for iTunes which chooses a pre-determined playlist from your iTunes library, then prompts for the volume level. After all of this is done, it plays the selected playlist at the specified volume level: tell application "iTunes" activate set visible of front window to true set view of front window to playlist "Hall & Oates" copy [...]

Choosing a Color from the Color Picker

admin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:41:47 +0000

The final ‘choose’ command, ‘choose color’ will be covered here. The choose color dialog is somewhat obscure and you aren’t as likely to use it as the others, but it is worth mention. It is not complicated at all. The script below results in the color picker window, with the rainbow effect as in the [...]

Choose Application

admin — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:39:51 +0000

The ‘choose application’ command is very similar in syntax to the ‘choose file’ command, in fact, so similar that I will not go into too much detail. As in my post on the enhancements to the list dialog, I will present a script and then explain the purpose of the parameters used as needed:

set theApp [...]

Enhanced Choose from List (Tiger and Leopard)

admin — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:04:25 +0000

In one of my early posts I outlined the basic syntax for the ‘Choose from List’ dialog. Here, I will present some of the new parameters that are available in Tiger (10.4) and Leopard (10.5).

In case you need to refresh your memory, here is the basic command:

set theName to (choose from list {"John", "Joe", "Bill"} [...]

Choose File Name Command

admin — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:10:54 +0000

The ‘choose file name’ command is similar to the ‘choose file’ command. unlike the choose file command it returns a reference pointer to a file that does not yet exist without actually creating the file:

set theFile to choose file name with prompt "Set file name and location:"

With a result such as:file “Macintosh HD:Users:administrator:Desktop:Untitled”

Choose file name [...]