kerrydawson

Thanks David. That's perfect.

I recall seeing that you could display a found telephone number in a contacts card in large type on the screen. Can anyone tell me how you do that.

I just downloaded the new version and it works the way I want. Actually in my testing I imported a number of fresh emails into DEVONthink and typed in a keyword I knew would be there and the fresh files turned up yet 5 of them had the same title as they are just different to/from emails. Pressing the shift key I wasn't able to look in these files. I did actually have to jump to DEVONthink and use the AI search engine to find these files and see what specifically was in each one to find the critical one I wanted. There's definitely a keen balance that has to be struck between what Alfred can do and where you need the horsepower of DEVONthink to step in. This was actually a good exercise for me to. Kind of fortuitous.

Hi _mk_, I'm still happily using the original version. I really only have two DB's at this time that I actively use and a couple more and growing that become archival DBs. I prefer searching across DBs rather than specifically in them. I'm assuming doing your upgrade wouldn't change the way I do things as I'm happy now with the output. Often I'll get to the file I'm looking for and using Alfred's shift key to look inside I'll have found what I want. So if I upgrade, everything will remain the same? Sometimes, I do have to go to DEVONthink itself and use its advanced search functionality and AI technology but I don't unless I need to. Oddly enough, I agreed to do an interview for a podcast on DEVONthink and I thought it was going to have a certain focus but the interviewer wants to do that but with attention to DEVONthink's AI technology LOL! I better do a few practice runs to make sure I haven't gotten to reliant on my butler. I don't think it'll sound too good if I'm asked a question in this area and then I call out Alfred oh Alfred ..... and I get back could you please elaborate and I go Alfred where are you ..... ALFRED!!!!!!!!!!!!

Interesting. It showed me more than four but certainly not all that was running. Odd there’d be a limitation.

I went to quit preview and Alfred didn't have it as running. It had a ton of others running but not that one. I was just wondering if there's a limit to how many apps can be displayed.

David, I'm sorry I missed this message for some reason. I wish I had seen it. With a lot of horsing around I came up with exactly the same thing: on alfred_script(q) tell application "Mail" activate set theMsg to make new outgoing message with properties {sender:"<ksXXXXXX@icloud.com>", visible:true} set message signature of theMsg to signature "Kerry Dawson" end tell end alfred_script I created another Alfred workflow in the same workflow with exactly the above but I changed it to my other ID and its signature. So I have the above Alfred emb for email business and emp for email personal. They both work great. Thanks for your help. I told you I'm not a scripter LOL! I've got my Applescript book out AppleScript 1-2-3 and its no Lotus 1-2-3. Its over 800 pages. It describes itself as "A self-paced guide to learning Applescript". Yeah well my pace is I might get through it in ten years - NOT. I actually want to convert these Applescripts so that they take say a reply email and possibly change the outgoing ID and signature. So they won't have to create a new message but act on the existing message. I think I might figure that one out. I just keep playing around by pulling this out and that and Applescript says nope so I put it all back together and look at what seems logical and try again. In your above scenario I somehow accidentally hit it LOL! Yes, I wish I had seen this response sooner but I did create my first AppleScript and then put it in Alfred and it worked and then I put it in Keyboard Maestro and it worked. I can see some things are faster in the way they happen if you do use Applescript. One thing I'm finding about Alfred is its giving me tons of ideas I hadn't thought about before. I am using it all the time now. I haven't gone crazy but I love saying "Alfred" log me into the Royal bank and I type Alfred 1p Royal and I'm there. However, I then began thinking how does Alfred do this and so doing a Google search I found out from Agilebits support site how to do this directly for 1Password and now can do this in a variety of ways. This is what I mean about Alfred is making me think about things I wouldn't normally think about doing. Howevever, I have to remain a good GTDr and keep focused on what I really do. One of those things I haven't done in a few days is write an article LOL! I should have my next one done today. Its a toughie and i've been procrastinating on this one for a while but I'm pretty well done. However, I kind of like to kind of distract myself with well what else can I get Alfred to do for me .

David - that worked like a charm. Alfred quickly closed down all my running apps and restarted the computer. Thanks

Thanks David Another quick question as I'm totally baffled by this one. I have two Applescripts I'd like to combine so that the first does what it does and tells mail to send my email from ksdawson tell application "Mail" to make new outgoing message with properties {sender:"<ksdawson@icloud.com>", visible:true} This works perfectly Now I have another Applescript that creates a new mail message to sign the mail Kerry Dawson tell application "Mail" activate set theMsg to make new outgoing message with properties {visible:true} set message signature of theMsg to signature "Kerry Dawson" end tell Do you have any idea how to get the one mail message to send from ksdawson as in the first Applescript and combine the second so that it also signs it Kerry Dawson This would save me from constantly having to choose these items I just can't figure out how to put these together just to create the one mail item with the id and signature

I want to quit all my applications first and then restart the computer. I have the feeling the two commands are happening concurrently rather than consecutively. How would I construct this workflow to accomplish the above.

Andrew, As I was writing you I decided to try something I do all the time which is a little laborious. In DEVONthink there are a ton of Applescripts that are written to do things many of which I use. One I use all the time is for tagging documents. I have to pull down the menu etc find the script, run it and enter my tags. I thought well I’ll just open the script, copy it and paste it into an Alfred Applescripts command. I applied the keyword TD (tag DEVONthink) without an argument, jumped to DEVONthink, highlighted a group of documents that needed tagging and I went Alfred TD enter and wham there is my entry panel for the tags so I entered my tags and they were all tagged. Now not in a million years could I write the script that I pasted into Alfred however, since it was already written I just pasted it in. The benefit to me is I no longer have to pull down the menu and run the script etc. Its there immediately. Again, I can run from Keyboard Maestro but since i have so many hotkeys I now use numerous palettes to divide actions up and so I have to enter a hotkey and then a palette key which I generally remember and sometimes don’t and have to either click or go looking for how I assigned it and remember it for next time. TD is an easy one to remember. Its not that I can’t do this with Keyboard Maestro I just didn’t know till now I could make this native to Alfred. Interesting but like I said not in a million years could i write that script but I know who did and who knows how to do it but I’m not going to distract them from a very important project as much as I’m having fun.

Andrew, This is good stuff what Vero is doing but I know exactly what Cameron means. I would have loved to have had a simple sort of manual or at least a top level guide as to this is what Alfred is, what you can do with Alfred etc etc. Then some area examples and pointers to possibly the online stuff. The lack of an overview of Alfred left me in the beginning looking at Alfred as this is supposed to be simple and powerful. The simple just seemed like this was somehow everything I had and the powerful was in what way and it looked liked scripting solely to make it powerfull and that just is not the case. As an example, I was sitting here the other evening thinking (David helped me) how can I get Andrew to do what I already do with Keyboard Maestro but can I do it with Alfred. I found a post of David’s in which he said you can’t string stuff together which I had discovered. So I thought well I’ve already created what I want to do with Automator and an Applescript that is actioned within my automator workflow. I’ll just see if Alfred will run that as I couldn’t see why he couldn’t and sure enough within less than one minute I had Alfred doing exactly what I wanted. All I did was was tell Alfred to run my workflow application using the key command EDT for Empty Downloads and Trash. Alfred EDT and wham gone. So it is very powerful but you have to sort of have this higher view level that you can get Alfred to do things like this. I would say I’m at a point where 50% of my automated commands are Alfred. As an example, Alfred 1p BMO and he logs me into the Bank of Montreal. The other 50% of my actions are probably initiated by Keyboard Maestro. Alot of what I get Alfred to do are Keyboard Maestro things. Then I’ve got some things from Vero, Marko and Arunjc that I can only do in Alfred that are very cool and I can’t do in Keyboard Maestro. There are somethings I only can do in Keyboard Maestro and at this stage would have no idea how to do in Alfred. So its turning into a dynamite combo. I find I use Alfred all the time now. However, if I add something, like a workflow I’ll approach Alfred cautiously. However, doing this I don’t get frustrated and Alfred delivers up some pretty good stuff. I’m not so much into programming my own things yet but that will come with time. I’ve got a lot programmed and I find when you automate sometimes what seems great at the moment and you spend hours on just isn’t necessary in a very short period of time or just isn’t required. So I really try to avoid spending anymore time than necessary except to use Alfred to get things done and its working out very well. Slow and easy is my approach. Oh and the other thing that has helped me learn Alfred’s ways is testing workflows for others till they get it the way they want it. I like doing that kind of thing. However, back to Cameron’s point, I think for the new user a high level, overview document (not a 100 pager to explain all his nuances as that would be very resource intensive) would be extremely helpful to the newcomer. It would sort of set the stage and what you can and can’t do (expectations). I think when i was starting with Alfred I stumbled across Vero’s online work but its now I use it a lot now that I know Alfred and I want to know specifically how do I do a contacts search and say send an email etc. I don’t know. Just a thought.

Hi, Don McAllister has done three tutorials recently on Alfred 2 at screencastsonline.com however, the only thing is you need to be a member to watch his tutorials. I think you can sign up for 3 months for $23 I believe and its well worth it. He’s got a slew of Mac tutorials on a variety of software. He does excellent tutorials. The only thing that i have to sort of caution you about with Don and the Alfred tutorials if that if you’re not familiar with Alfred he can easily loose you. I found you watch them once, play around with Alfred, interact with others on the forums and then go back and watch the tutorials a second and maybe a third time. Each time they make more sense. This rarely happens with me and Don’s tutorials but when i decided to be learn Markdown for my writing I started with Don’t tutorial and I sat there and thought what have I gotten myself into. Now I can really only write in Markdown (not true but it feels that way as I just whiz a long now without even thinking about it). When I went and watched the tutorial on Markdown again after reading David Sparks book on Markdown it made perfect sense to me.

Hi David - I know nothing about this bash scripting thing but it is simple and its faster than the workflow that I use. Not by much but it is. The only thing about my workflow I like is that I get that trashing sound which I know means the files have been trashed. A little thing but I like it.

Hey David it works. Its slightly faster than my automator/Applescript workflow and a touch more transparent. You actually only need the first line and the downloads file is emptied. With the second command if there is a file sitting in the trash then it empties that. So both combined is what I want as I want the downloads and trash folder both emptied at the same time. Thanks Kerry

Thanks David. That would be even simpler in terms

I found the answer I guess I was looking for here. I was wondering if you can string actions together and you can’t. What I wanted Alfred to do was empty my downloads folder and then empty the trash. Since David is right that in Alfred these run concurrently the downloads folder would be emptied. So i decided I’ll use my automator workflow but convert it to an app which Alfred sees. My automator workflow is the first part an Automator Workflow to move the finder items in the downloads folder to the trash and then another automator workflow that runs a simple Applescript to empty the trash. I created an Alfred workflow that would run applications from a keyword so I used the keyword em. Once that is invoked there’s my Automator workflow as an application and I hit enter and the folder is downloads folder is deleted and the trash emptied. I just wanted to try to do something in Alfred that I do elsewhere to get a feel for creating a workflow and it worked fine and fast. Since I invoke this from a Hotkey elsewhere I decided not to use a hotkey. I would say the stringing of actions would be beneficial to the development of Alfred as I don’t know about in this case but you might be able to avoid Automator or Applescript if you could string actions. I’m guessing then that all boolean functions if you were to conduct this kind of workflow in Alfred would have to be handled outside of Alfred by either a program that supports boolean operation or Applescript or....???? Anyway, it works and it didn’t take me long to put together as this automator workflow I had already in my stock of Automator/Applescript workflows (the scripts I always find using a Google search - I don’t script LOL!).

Hi, Thanks. That’s good. Often I just want to get a broad overview of a set of email’s I wrote in this case back in the the Dec time-frame around an Apple Case. I could remember a name of a critical person and the em command found the name and with the shift key I saw a case number. I did a search with the case # and a pile of email’s turned up with a piece of critical information - a date and it was December 12 2012. From there it was easy to then generate what I needed to add to a new case around the same issue that i thought was cleaned up but wasn’t. A small thing but important. So this I could have done in mail but it saved me a step - actually a few due to the way mail operates. I had actually generated the case with Apple engineering Saturday interestingly from Marko’s DEVON workflow. This one is a winner. Most critical email and everything else for that matter I import to DEVONthink. So using Marko’s workflow I was able to find that case #. However, using Vero’s I found it much faster as there was a lot of email’s that didn’t appear critical that I didn’t import. Within less than a minute of Alfred searching I had exactly the information I needed to support the generated case - so we didn’t have to start at square one. So I really like Marko’s DEVON workflow and Vero’s mail workflow. I find I’m replacing Launchbar in my arsenal with Alfred slowly. All the basics I’m finding I’m getting onto no problem. In the case of something that requires a workflow, I like to leave that to the people that know how to program as I definitely don’t LOL! So I peruse the workflow shared forum every so often and see some interesting stuff. Also, one fellow has often asked me to test his workflows as he gets the kinks ironed out of it which I like doing. This iterative process works well for me. So all is good in the land of Alfred. Its making more sense to me. Its actually faster than Launchbar at some things and can do others it can do but I think quicker once you know Alfred’s ways . It seems it can do more now that I think about it. I think my toolset may change to Alfred, Keyboard Maestro and TextExpander with Launcbar as my backup now. Kerry

Thanks very much. I really appreciate your help. It gave me an even better idea of how Alfred does things which is good. Kerry

Thanks I like your workflow. Oddly it turns up some things but not everything. If you go in mail and type the same thing Justice it will find four emails to Justice. If you type in Alfred though Justice as soon as you get past the t it defaults to a Google search. However, if I look for Cameron the most important email turns up for him but if you search in Mail 6 items turn up for him. Do you have any idea why that would be.

When I search for an email item Alfred will usually find an email that I’ve imported to DEVONthink no problem. However, it doesn’t seem to find email items in mail.app. I don’t necessarily import everything to DEVONthink. Can Alfred find email items in Mail.app directly.

Yeah that's one I use and I don't have any problem. Its interesting, I noticed when I'd run Onyx (I don't anymore) that I'd have that problem but not with this but with some other applications and I'd have to kind of do a similar thing and it would work again. I'm not really running any of these kind of programs. What I do run which just runs in background is CheckMate from Micromat and all it does is just check the system on a regular basis for problems such volume structures failure. If it reports a problem then I'll run a tool but I'm tending to run less aggressive stuff like Apple's own disk utilities and then all is fine and CheckMate just goes of and does it thing. I never really even think about it till I notice its icon blinking in red so then I'l see whats up and take the corrective action. You might want to take a look at this as it saves you from having to do anything till a problem turns up. I got a little tired of these more aggressive utilities doing exactly what @drking pointed out. Works well.

Marko would have to answer this but what version of DEVONthink do you have e.g. personal, pro or professional

Great. So that’s cool about keeping the juices flowing. Are you a programmer or were???? I’m not a programmer as you tell but I’ve worked in IT for all of my career since university (degrees in Psychology if you can believe it) doing R&D, consulting and now I’m just focusing on writing and some consulting but home based (no more meetings please LOL!). Kerry

Hey, So did you want me to test that on my Gmail account. I don’t use it anymore as my primary email but I get lots of email on Gmail still. I don’t have it configured in my mail.app but rather this menubar applet Mailtabs Pro to access Gmail. I can test it for you if you’d like. You’re sure being kept busy by this one Kerry