I have been successfully using a Hazel script for years, based on a modified version of Katie Floyd’s script. Recently, it started introducing several types of errors while going through my files. Sometimes it doesn’t OCR, at other times it reports an error when it evaluates a Word doc.
I’m using PDF Pen Pro 12.2.2 and latest versions of Hazel and Mac OS.
I know that PDF Pen Pro was sold to another company. Maybe this could help explain the changes.
Does anyone else have this problem, and do they have a a workaround?
I should mention that these problems started after I move all of my pdfs and other docs to iCloud and adjusted the Hazel monitoring folder accordingly.
I’ve had some problems mainly related to searching for content within files as part of the Hazel rules. You need to use Contents Contain and not Content Matches. The latter is faster but uses Spotlight and the files are sometimes not indexed fast enough after the OCR to be seen. You may be having a similar issue in trying to use files OCRed into iCloud.
I activated yesterday also the “Desktop and Documents” option on my new installed iMac, and Hazel stopped working on the folder I have my Scans in. I don’t know yet if it is a general problem, with iCloud and Hazel, if the not yet running upload of the files was the problem, or if something else stopped it working, but after I moved the scans out of the iCloud, Hazel run almost immediately (after I set up the new folder location).
So iCloud could be the problem! I didn’t have these problems with my pdfs were in Dropbox.
Hazel sends various messages, such as “the file couldn’t be opened because it isn’t in the right format.” It also asks me to lock and duplicate files before OCR. I get the message that “PDFpenPro does not preserve PDF/A documents in archive format.” Finally, I noticed that many (but not all) files that get flagged have hyphens in the names.
Since I upgraded to Ventura (about a week ago) this situation has gotten worse. Perhaps there is a new Hazel as well as the fields seemed to have changed. (My upgrade didn’t go well as my iMac died in the process – all data was saved but most apps had to be reinstalled),
For all PDFs, even those not just scanned but containing the text layer, I now have to use “Contents contain match” and not “Contents contain”. Note the difference in nomenclature! Also the new condition type allows complex pattern matching (a simplified regex search) which I don’t remember from before.
At my age I get disturbed when my cheese is moved!
I did find in the version notes or maybe a blog at Noodlesoft, that there was some changes made to the Hazel app which could have explained why things broke for me. But using “Contents contain match” works fine.