Software to schedule the launch of apps?

Comments

• Reply 1 of 4

  denverkirrane Posts: 62member

  October 14, 2005 4:04AM

  You could try and write a bit of applescript. It should only be a couple of lines of code like
  
  
  
  tell application "Finder"
  
  \tactivate
  
  end tell
  
  
  
  get that to run at a certain time using iCal or something.
  
  
  
  That might work
  
  
  
  Not sure on the script though, you might need ot modify that
  
  
  
  Hope this helps
  
  
  
  Denver
• Reply 2 of 4

  danielctull Posts: 586member

  October 14, 2005 5:57AM

  Denver was absolutely right on. Automator is the app you need here really, it will let you create an application which you can tell iCal to use as an "alarm". Based on what I assume you would want something like this for, this is how I would do it.
  
  
  
  Run Automator and go to the Finder actions. Add 'Get Specified Finder Items' to the list. Click the + button to add a folder to the list. So for example: "users/me/worddocs/". This lets you have a folder to put Word documents in it.
  
  
  
  Next add 'Get folder contents' to the list, this will load the items in the folder.
  
  
  
  Then add 'Open Finder Items', and where it says "Open with: " click down and find your favourite Word Processing app.
  
  
  
  Just to make sure you should have:
  
  1. Get Specified Finder Items
  
  2. Get Folder Contents
  
  3. Open Finder Items
  
  
  
  Click Run to tes this works, it should open all the Word docs in your word processing app. If it does this, go to Automator and Save As and change 'Workflow' to 'Application'. Oh and don't save it in the folder you're using for word docs, as only the word docs should be in that folder.
  
  
  
  Now open iCal, create an event and choose 'Open file' next to alarm. Have the alarm go off at a particular time, for your case just after 12am and it will execute the Automator workflow.
  
  
  
  The beauty of this is that you should be able to repeat for every night, and you can add new word docs to be opened and delete older ones that you no longer need to open at midnight...
• Reply 3 of 4

  danielctull Posts: 586member

  October 14, 2005 6:02AM

  Oh also, I've just seen an action in the Finder library called Launch application. I guess that's also what you want, however my other method would allow you to have new files automatically opened with said applictation.
• Reply 4 of 4

  spiers69 Posts: 418member

  October 15, 2005 8:39AM

  thanks!
  
  that'd worked perfectly!
  
  
  
  Now just to set it up on the iMac, so that it doesnt keep me awake (the eMac's fan is so loud in comparison!)
  
  
  
  thanks again