Address Book to Pages Mail Merge

[hotoru]

Every time I try to do something with Automator it seems to end in frustration :frown: I have a pages document with some fields set to mail merge. This allows the front office to copy the customer information from address book into a form page. I can drag contact from address book into the document at it works fine. But, I would like to automate the process.

I setup automator with:
--Get Selected Address book People
--Get Specified Finder Items (pages document with merge)
--Launch Application (Pages)

Automator grabs the correct address book entry but does not seem to pass it to pages. Any suggestions? I tried to set up a service in address book to export the contact but address book does not seem to recognize any services pertaining to selected contacts. Ideally I would like the process to print a form with customer info the launch another pages document to print an address label for same customer.

Any suggestions appreciated
TIA
Hotoru

 

[Kaveman]

Wouldn't you be better to use the Merge Tab of the Link Inspector?

 

[hotoru]

Thanks for the reply. I am using the merge field in the document. That is how I am able to drag address book items onto the pages document. My current workflow is:

Customer enters building
--open address book
--find customer
--Open Pages Document
--Drag Customer from Address to pages document
--print document
--open second pages document with label
--drag customer from address book to label document
--print label

I was hoping to use automator to shorten this workflow to
Customer enters
--open address book
--find customer
--drag customer to MyAutomator icon

thanks,
Hotoru

 

[Kaveman]

but Pages isn't scriptable...

 

[hotoru]

but Pages isn't scriptable...

I appreciate, but fear I do not fully understand your reply. Are you saying, in order for Automator to control what data is sent to Pages it would have to have a scriptable language? I would be open to alternative solutions for this problem

I thought of using the "Record" feature of automator to log the steps involved in the process. But, I fear some would involve recording mouse actions. In my past experience, this is fraught with problems as the mouse action can fail if the window is moved slightly away from the original position when the action was first recorded.

Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Hotoru

 

[Kaveman]

For an Application to receive and act on Automator actions they have to be written, by the application developer, in this case Apple. They haven't written Automator Actions for Pages, so it can't be Automatored. Pages does not have an AppleScript library, so it is not possible to write AppleScript, nor does it have any other scripting options, other than the Merge option I pointed to.

Yes, you may be able to use Universal Access to get around this but as you pointed out that is extremely fragile.

I hope Apple fixes this, as iWork would really benefit from automation tools, but given the further restrictions Sandboxing places on Apps, I suspect we will be seeing less scripting/automator options not more.

 

[hotoru]

<snip>I hope Apple fixes this, as iWork would really benefit from automation tools, but given the further restrictions Sandboxing places on Apps, I suspect we will be seeing less scripting/automator options not more.

Well, thanks anyway. I seem to run into a wall whenever I think to use automator for some task. Maybe, I could try to put customer data in Filemaker or Bento and use the reports feature to print the custom report and customer label.. hmm
Hotoru

 

[Kaveman]

We use Bento and find it great, for these sorts of tasks. And it's network aware.

But its not scriptable!

 

[hotoru]

We use Bento and find it great, for these sorts of tasks. And it's network aware. But its not scriptable!

Thanks, do you know if there is any way to import my existing pages document into a bento report? I could probably just copy and paste the text. Tables might not convert as well.
Hotoru

 

[Kaveman]

You'll have to redesign the Forms in Bento and they are limiting.

But FileMaker can have a PDF as a background and drop the fields onto that.