Stephen_C

But the Powerpack appears not to be installed—because if it is you should have a Powerpack icon in your Alfred preferences. If you did buy the Powerpack and installed it try quitting and restarting Alfred. Stephen

Did you buy the Powerpack? You need that in order to use Workflows. Stephen

I wonder if it's possible that in moving back from the beta to the current non-beta version you may have left traces of the beta version on your machine which are now interfering. (I appreciate that does not address your original move/copy problem which apparently occurred on both the current release and beta versions.) Stephen

While I have not had reason to use it, others have recommended the free program shortcut detective to help ascertain whether there is a conflict between shortcuts. It may be able to tell you if some other program is using that shortcut. Stephen Edit: corrected typo.

@Andrew I see what you mean! Very many thanks: brilliant! Stephen

Just in passing, it's always worth trying locking and unlocking again. There seems to be some sort of bug (which I reported to Apple over 18 months ago) which effectively disables text expansion (e.g., in Typinator) sometimes (but not always) when you unlock a MacBook Pro using an Apple Watch. The bug also prevents long press working to produce accented alternatives for a specific key (which is what I reported to Apple in order to avoid the suggestion the problem was limited to some third party app 😉). That resolves if you lock and then unlock with touch ID. Apologies for being a little off-topic. Stephen

I know this isn't exactly the answer you were seeking but I'd use the smart little utility PopClip for that. There is a free trial so you could try it to see if it works for you. (It does a lot more than merely convert html to markdown, of course. I find it invaluable.) Stephen

Do you have a recent backup of your system? It sounds as though it's not merely Alfred that's affected so it might be better to restore the system from a recent backup. In passing, I dislike apps like the one you mention and think they do more harm than good. I'm sorry that you've found that out the hard way and hope you can find some way of recovering what you need. Stephen

I think I might just be happy to await Alfred 4.5. 😀 Stephen

Yes, indeed - I was able to make that work before embarking on the current difficulties. That may, in the end, be the neatest solution. Edit: This is all my fault. I use the Default Finder X Finder drawer and was merely seeing if I could effectively replace it with something in Alfred! Stephen

<Blush> I do hate not being able to work out things for myself but I have to confess the offer is rather appreciated (but not urgent - so merely when you have a moment!). I have no problem setting the hot key and getting Finder selected files into the buffer but have not yet discovered how I can use the Action in Alfred utility to automatically then display the Alfred action pane. I think I may be in a little out of my depth, sorry! Stephen

Thank you to both of you. I've spent a lot of time the past few days trying to improve my knowledge and use of Alfred (which I've used for years) so apologise for missing the fact the buffer (without a little work) does not work directly in Finder. Stephen

Briefly, I'm unable to use the file buffer functions in Finder. I am using Alfred 4.3.4 on my 16" (Intel) MacBook Pro running macOS 11.3.1. I have enabled the temporary file buffer and have checked "Use ⇧⌥ as modifier key". In case it's relevant I'll mention that I've set the selection key for file actions in macOS to ⌃⌘\. I have checked Alfred's permissions and all are enabled in system preferences. (I have also tried disabling and re-enabling Finder automation and full disk access for Alfred.) Although I'm able to display the file actions panel in both Alfred and Finder the buffer commands in Finder do nothing at all and I'm rather at a loss as to what to try next. Stephen

Many thanks for the response. I did as you suggested and both I and Alfred are very happy again. "Lock" now works. Stephen

Thanks for the idea. However, I have checked and ⌘ + ⌃ + Q is not mapped to anything else (and does indeed work to show the lock screen when I use it). Stephen

First, I have reviewed this thread - which did not provide a solution. Second, I have checked and specifically enabled all system permissions for Alfred (General > Request Permissions) - and rebooted. I am using Alfred 4.3 from the website, with the power pack, running on macOS 11.1. All system commands work in Alfred (screen saver, show trash, log out, sleep, restart, shutdown, etc.) - with the exception of "Lock" which does nothing at all. If anyone has a solution to the problem it would be much appreciated. I don't think I'm overlooking anything obvious and so wasting your time: I hope not! Stephen

I confirm that's how Postbox works if you use the inbuilt Alfred email [contact] command. The email is opened with the cursor in the subject line...so it's probably easier to type it there rather than at an Alfred workflow prompt. (I'm confirming simply because I use Postbox and so was able to test it.) Stephen

If you are using the Alfred Powerpack and Postbox is your default email client you should be able simply to type email in Alfred followed by the contact name—which should start a new blank email in Postbox. This Alfred help page has more details: https://www.alfredapp.com/help/features/contacts/#email. Stephen

Thanks for that idea. I've submitted a feature request on the Postbox site asking if it's possible to have a metadata tag specifically identifying the author of an email and have linked that request to this thread. Stephen

Yes...undoubtedly! However as: I am a beginner with Alfred; and I don't really need the workflow I seem to have developed I may leave that for the moment. Nevertheless, I'd not have got this far without your help—which is much appreciated. Stephen

Thanks for the really helpful response. I have waded in to all of this well out of my depth but have made progress—purely as a matter of interest, as personally I'm happy to rely on the native Postbox search. I've managed to adapt the original workflow successfully to search either mail content or subject header with no problems. What I suspect is not possible is to search by author—because there appears to be no metadata item which will easily yield that information in a user friendly form. This is a sample of the output of the mdls command: _kMDItemOwnerUserID = 501 kMDItemContentCreationDate = 2016-07-14 08:40:03 +0000 kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2016-07-14 08:40:03 +0000 kMDItemContentType = "com.postbox-inc.postbox.pbeml" kMDItemContentTypeTree = ( "com.postbox-inc.postbox.pbeml", "public.data", "public.item", "public.content", "public.email-message", "public.message" ) kMDItemDateAdded = 2016-07-14 08:40:03 +0000 kMDItemDisplayName = "From London" kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2016-07-14 08:40:03 +0000 kMDItemFSCreationDate = 2016-07-14 08:40:03 +0000 kMDItemFSCreatorCode = "" kMDItemFSFinderFlags = 0 kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon = (null) kMDItemFSInvisible = 0 kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = 0 kMDItemFSIsStationery = (null) kMDItemFSLabel = 0 kMDItemFSName = "54736DB1.8020000%40[redacted—but my domain name].co.uk.pbeml" kMDItemFSNodeCount = (null) kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID = 20 kMDItemFSOwnerUserID = 501 kMDItemFSSize = 1678 kMDItemFSTypeCode = "" kMDItemKind = "Postbox Mail Message" kMDItemLogicalSize = 1678 kMDItemPhysicalSize = 4096 kMDItemTitle = "From London" As I say, I was really doing this out of interest to see if I could assist the original poster so please don't spend time on it just for me! It's been an interesting exercise in any event—& the article to which you linked was very useful. Thanks again. Edit: a little more research has disclosed that the author details are embedded in kMDItemTextContent string—so the content search will also pick up the author of the email. Stephen

I am a new user of Alfred (a few weeks or so) but have used Postbox for a number of years. Because of my lack of experience with Alfred you may need to take what I say with a pinch of salt. That said, a couple of weeks ago I did look at the possibility of using Alfred to search Postbox emails. I got as far as: Enabling Spotlight search in Postbox (Postbox > Preferences > General and check Allow Spotlight to search messages). Experimenting with the mail workflow referred to in the preceding post to see if I could produce meaningful results from Postbox search. It all came rather adrift when I was unable to discover the appropriate metadata fields to direct the search—so that in effect all I was able to search was for the occurrence of text within a mail message (if I recall correctly). (In other words, I never discovered how to search message headers, senders or recipients.) I'm afraid at that stage I rather pathetically gave up—partly because search within Postbox itself is so efficient. Sorry this is not more helpful! Stephen