Batch conversion of Pages files

My current assignment makes me a Mac weenie in a Microsoft world, so while I’m happily tootling along in Pages I need to be able to share stuff with my colleagues. At the moment I’m the primary author of 30+ short course descriptions, stored in separate Pages files, and I’ve been exporting them to RTF when I need to share them. That was initially ok, but got out of hand as the number of files grew, so yesterday I was introduced to AppleScript.

I know nothing about AppleScript, but I was able to find a script on the web (thanks again, Google) that did most of what I want. I’ll show you the script, then tell you the parts that weren’t obvious to me and slowed me down

on open theFiles
	tell application "Pages"
		repeat with aFile in theFiles
			open aFile
			set docName to name of front document
			-- Remove .pages extension.
			set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
			set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ".pages"
			-- Add .pdf extension.
			set docName to first text item of docName & ".rtf"
			set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs
			-- Save file to Desktop.
			set docPathAndName to (path to desktop as string) & "rtfs:" & docName
			save front document as ".rtf" in docPathAndName
			close front document
		end repeat
	end tell
end open

My first challenge was that I couldn’t figure out how to get this to run! Pressing “Run” in ScriptEditor did nothing. I ended up saving it as an applet (use “Save As”, selecting FileFormat => application), and then I could drag and drop the files I wanted to convert onto the applet. Once I put the applet in the dock, that was pretty convenient.

The second thing that slowed me down was figuring out how to save the results to a folder (the original script saved to the desktop). What I needed was the bit ‘ & “rtfs:”‘ while setting the docPathAndName. Here I’m dealing with a string, and it already has a trailing “:” – I kept trying to add another one, and AppleScript gave me a message about the target not being writable, rather than not existing, which lead me astray for a while.

Anyway, now I can select my Pages files, drag and drop them onto the applet in my dock, and the rtf files appear in a folder on my desktop. Sweet!

~ by Steve Hayes on April 17, 2008.