New Word Document

[willow1981]

Hello everyone, So I decided to create a workflow that creates a new word document. For this workflow to work you must do a couple of things on your computer first. 

NOTE: You must have Microsoft Office 2011 installed on your Mac before this works, the Beta version of Office that just came out doesn't seem to work with Automator just yet.  

Link to Packal workflow: http://www.packal.org/workflow/new-word-document

1. Open Automator
2. Choose Application as new document. 
3. Find "Launch Applications" under Actions --- Utilities  and click it to add it to Automator workflow. 
4. Click scroll menu down until you find "Microsoft Word" If you have the Beta version of Word also you can use that one instead. 
5. Click on Actions ---- Documents and find "Create New Word Document" and click that to add to workflow. 
6. Save the Automator Application anywhere you like though remember the path. 
7. Open downloaded "New Word Document" workflow. 
8. This should bring up the workflow in Alfred Preferences. 
9. Double select the center part that says "Create New Document" and it looks like the icon from Automator which should pull up a white dialog box. Delete original destination in there.
10. Drag the Automator Application you just created into the white dialog box. 
11. Save workflow. 
12. Try it out by typing "NWD" into Alfred and it should work. 

If you encounter errors I will try and fix them if possible. 

Thanks. 

[dfay]

A simpler way to do this (without the dependency on Automator) would be using a very short AppleScript, which could be called from a keyword in an Alfred workflow:

tell application "Microsoft Word"
	activate
	make new document
end tell

Word (and Office in general) has some of the best AppleScript support of any apps on the Mac & it's well worth checking out -- you can automate practically every feature of the program.

 

Incidentally the script above works with the beta (and would probably work on OS 9....).

Edited April 2, 2015 by dfay

[rice.shawn]

Another option, if you want to make a blank Word document without opening Word, then you could just use Bash

touch ~/Desktop/test.docx

[mkborregaard]

@dfay That sounds smart - where can I read about how to launch an applescript from a keyword in a workflow? Sorry for the noob question.

[Vero]

@mkborregaard There are dozens of templates to help you get started, and over 60 workflows (examples, templates and Getting Started guides) built into Alfred:

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/workflows/templates/

 

Under Templates > Essentials, you'll find a "Keyword to AppleScript" you can use to get started.

 

Cheers,
Vero