5/16/2023 0 Comments Textexpander houdahspotNow when I type ,its, TextExpander automatically turns it into 2011_01_15-ScotiaiTrade-RRSP. That looks super-ugly (don’t let it scare you off TextExpander, most rules wouldn’t be like this), but basically is saying “subtract one month from today’s date and format it as yyyy mmdd”. I am not going to go through the ins and outs of TextExpander in this post but here is a screenshot of my rule: In this case, what I am going to do is take the renaming step out of the Hazel rule and then set up a TextExpander snippet to do the filenaming for me. Basically, it allows you to type in small snippets of text and have them expand (get it?) to longer ones. If you are not familiar with TextExpander, it is a Mac application like Hazel: you don’t really think you need it until you have it, and then once you have it you can’t imagine life without it. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that Hazel has the functionality to do any sort of date math, so for me TextExpander will have to come to the rescue. The statement that I am downloading today (in February) is actually January’s statement, and having that February date in the filename will just not do. There is only one problem that I know will drive me crazy. If you’re impatient, you can run it manually by clicking on the Hazel icon up in your menu bar.Īnd look, there it is in my Statements folder:įor 90% of normal people, the above will work fine. Looks like it should work!ĭepending on the other Hazel rules going on, it may take a while to kick off. Click the plus sign beside our rename rule, and create a Move rule that moves it to your folder.Ĭlick OK, and if you want to see if this will work, click on the little gear icon on the bottom and choose Preview Rule Matches. So, for this rule, I want the file to be called yyyy_mm_dd-ScotiaiTrade-RRSP.pdf.Ĭlick into the pattern box and just type in “-ScotiaiTrade-RRSP” between “date created” and “extension”. In this case, I know that any PDF that I download from is going to be my RRSP statement. Hit Done and now the date format is looking good. The yyyy mm dd looks good, but click into the box and replace the dashes with underscores. That is not the date format that we want, so click on date created and choose Edit Date Pattern. Take a look at the example at the bottom. We’ve already established that the name is no good, so delete it.ĭrag “date created” up to the pattern section, and it will look like this: Obviously use your own naming convention and move it to wherever is appropriate for you.īefore the screenshot, I know some of you are going to ask “How do I move it to Evernote?” It is your lucky day, I already wrote a post about how to send PDFs to Evernote using Hazel so you can combine the two.įirst in the Do The Following section, I will change it to Rename File, and the default pattern it gives you is “name” and “extension”. Rename the file using the convention yyyy_mm_dd-name-type.pdf.Sure you could type it in yourself when you save it, but we are trying to be as automated as possible here. In all likelihood, the filename that your bank or vendor uses is totally useless. The conditions we’ll use in this case are:Īgain, substitute your own domain. Now lets give the rule a name, and create the conditions that Hazel will use to figure out which file to act on. Then we want to create a new rule, so hit the Plus button in the right column. Create A New Rule In Hazelįire up Hazel, and if you haven’t already, add the folder that you download PDFs to in the folder on the left. Since we have the URL embedded, we can use it to do stuff later. Obviously the URL that you downloaded it from will be there, not mine. You’ll see a bunch of junk in there including this: It will bring up the Info window, and look under the “More Info” section. The easiest way to see this is to highlight the file in Finder and hit Command-i. You may not know this, but when you download a PDF from the web, it has the address that it was downloaded from embedded in the file. Brilliant! Have no idea what on earth I just said? No worries, I’m about to go through it. Katie’s tip is to use the Source URL of the downloaded PDF as a basis for doing the processing. One great use of Hazel is to move all the PDFs that you are downloading from the web now that you are going paperless. It is well known that I love a little Mac app called Hazel that allows you to create rules to perform almost any function on your computer. That’s how I felt sitting in Katie Floyd’s Going Paperless presentation at Macworld 2011 (more on my Macworld roundup here). You know how sometimes you come across a tip that is so clever you are both happy to have learned it and annoyed that you didn’t think of it yourself at the same time?
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