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What I am trying to do: I have to scan some personal writing that I do for my mentor to review, I have 3 types of writing J,F,W. I use my scanner to send them via email (it's a work thing so I can't change it). I had this idea this morning that I could put the code in the subject line on the scanner and then have a rule to process the emails and file them in the correct folder for me.

I found and reused the script in the post Save attachments from Mail.app based on subject , answer from markhunte

I am using Mail in MacOSX 10.13.6

In order to do testing, I commented out the mail rule function.

My testing is just from me to manually select the messages in the mail app (will convert to rule once working).

One thing I can't get my head around is the first time it saves the file it does not rename the file. You will see that I have used logs to help me figure this out. On the first run of the script, the IF statement thinks the folder exists and so does not rename the file, rerun the script and it renames it correctly.

Feeling a little confused, help would be really appreciated.

My email has subject lines with one letter in them (I do that when I scan documents to make it easier). The attachment name is always scan.pdf

Directory with scans

There does appear to be an issue with the codeList as well, it does not find the first item in the List (hence why I have J twice), not a big deal currently.

 (*using terms from application "Mail" on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule*) set codeList to {"J", "F", "W", "O", "J"} set subFolder to "" set theDate to do shell script "date +%Y_%m_%d_%H%M%S" --set ruleName to name of theRule -- The folder to save the attachments in (must already exist) tell application "Finder" to set attachmentsFolder to ((path to home folder as text) & "Desktop") as text tell application "Mail" set theMessages to the selected messages of the front message viewer --set theMessage to first item of theMessages repeat with eachMessage in theMessages set theSubject to subject of eachMessage repeat with i from 1 to number of items in codeList set this_item to item i of codeList if theSubject contains this_item then set subFolder to this_item log "Found subject match " & this_item else -- display dialog "no subject " & this_item log "no subject " & this_item end if end repeat if (count of (eachMessage's mail attachments)) > 0 then log "Number of attachments is " & (count of (eachMessage's mail attachments)) try tell application "Finder" if not (exists folder subFolder of folder attachmentsFolder) then make new folder at attachmentsFolder with properties {name:subFolder} end if end tell -- Save the attachment repeat with theAttachment in eachMessage's mail attachments set originalName to name of theAttachment set savePath to attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & originalName tell application "Finder" if (exists file originalName of folder subFolder of folder attachmentsFolder) then set savePath to attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & theDate & "_" & subFolder & "_" & originalName log "File will be saved to path: " & attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & theDate & "_" & subFolder & "_" & originalName else log "Found that file path already exits: " & attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & theDate & "_" & subFolder & "_" & originalName end if end tell try save theAttachment in file (savePath) log "saved file to " & savePath end try end repeat on error error_message number error_number end try else log "Number of attachments is " & (count of (eachMessage's mail attachments)) end if end repeat end tell (*end perform mail action with messages end using terms from*)
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  • Maybe I'm missing something, but once your folders are created won't the script work fine from that point onwards? If so, wouldn't creating the folder(s) in advance be a one-off task? Or are you needing to have new folders created all the time (e.g. one for each week or month, etc)? Commented Sep 12, 2018 at 1:57
  • Yes, would like to have new folders created all the time (e.g. one for each week or month, etc)? Just find it strange why the if statement is having issues working the first time :( Commented Sep 12, 2018 at 3:56
  • I think I found the issue. Commented Sep 12, 2018 at 4:34

1 Answer 1

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I found it. The first setting of savePath does not have the extra code to rename the file (for whatever reason). I also got some start of week code included to create dynamic week folders.

Was: set savePath to attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & originalName

Now: set savePath to attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & theDate & "_" & originalName

Full Code:

 # https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/82085/301868 -- (markhunte) (*using terms from application "Mail" on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule*) set codeList to {"J", "F", "W", "O", "J"} set MainFolder to "Desktop" -- After the current users home dir set subFolder to "" set theDate to do shell script "date +%Y_%m_%d_%H%M%S" --set ruleName to name of theRule -- Sean Korzdorfer -- 2013-01-21 -- Fork of benwaldie Current Week Range TextExpander snippet: https://gist.github.com/4583398 set theDateW to (current date) set theStartDate to theDateW repeat until weekday of theStartDate = Wednesday set theStartDate to theStartDate - 1 * days end repeat -- Original Script Date Formatting: -- set theDate to (short date string of theStartDate) & " - " & (short date string of theEndDate) set theDateW to (year of theStartDate as string) & "-" & (my add_zero(month of theStartDate as integer)) & "-" & (my add_zero(day of theStartDate as integer)) on add_zero(theNumber) if theNumber < 10 then return "0" & (theNumber as string) else return theNumber as string end if end add_zero -- The folder to save the attachments in (must already exist) tell application "Finder" to set attachmentsFolder to ((path to home folder as text) & MainFolder) as text tell application "Mail" set theMessages to the selected messages of the front message viewer --set theMessage to first item of theMessages repeat with eachMessage in theMessages set theSubject to subject of eachMessage repeat with i from 1 to number of items in codeList set this_item to item i of codeList if theSubject contains this_item then set subFolder to theDateW log "Found subject match " & this_item else log "no subject " & this_item end if end repeat if (count of (eachMessage's mail attachments)) > 0 then log "Number of attachments is " & (count of (eachMessage's mail attachments)) try tell application "Finder" if not (exists folder subFolder of folder attachmentsFolder) then make new folder at attachmentsFolder with properties {name:subFolder} end if end tell -- Save the attachment repeat with theAttachment in eachMessage's mail attachments set originalName to name of theAttachment set savePath to attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & theDate & "_" & originalName tell application "Finder" if (exists file originalName of folder subFolder of folder attachmentsFolder) then set savePath to attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & theDate & "_" & originalName log "File will be saved to path: " & attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & theDate & "_" & originalName else log "Found that file path already exits: " & attachmentsFolder & ":" & subFolder & ":" & theDate & "_" & originalName end if end tell try save theAttachment in file (savePath) log "saved file to " & savePath end try end repeat on error error_message number error_number end try else log "Number of attachments is " & (count of (eachMessage's mail attachments)) end if end repeat end tell (*end perform mail action with messages end using terms from*)
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  • Be good to get some assistance on why the CodeList does not work on the first item? Commented Sep 12, 2018 at 4:41

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