Help with PDF workflow

Coulmac · November 17, 2018, 5:21am

My rental agency has moved to a new software system. Instead of emailing me a rental statement and associated invoices as PDFs each month, they are now links to a web document. Previosly all I had to do was press the spacebar for quick view and then share to DTPro.

As I can’t trust that the documents will always be available at the web address, I am now having to

go to the webdoc (via link in email)
export as PDF to a location
find that location in finder
quick view or open PDF
share to DTPro

Could someone offer a simple solution please?

RosemaryOrchard · November 17, 2018, 6:15am

Instead of exporting the PDF try printing it to DevonThink is my suggestion

Coulmac · November 17, 2018, 6:37am

Well that is still File/Print/PDF/Send PDF to DTPro ie 4 mouse clicks…

herrevjan · November 17, 2018, 6:41am

Pretty sure this could be sorted by a Shortcut and Scriptable on an iOS Device. Although my skill level is too low to do this on the fly…

RosemaryOrchard · November 17, 2018, 7:01am

You could use keyboard shortcuts - CMD+P gets you to print, add a keyboard shortcut and have one for print to DevonThink.

This trick is for a different PDF print command but the principle is the same.

dfay · November 17, 2018, 8:24am

If you want to get all fancy with UI scripting to customise print settings, here’s an example of how I’ve done it with Keynote.

github.com

derickfay/keynote-to-pdf/blob/master/Keynote 7 to PDF.applescript

-- Keynote 6 version

tell application "System Events"
	tell application process "Keynote"
		set frontmost to true
		
		repeat until window 1 exists
		end repeat
		
		-- Hide Inspector if visible	
		if menu item "Hide Inspector" of menu 1 of menu bar item "View" of menu bar 1 exists then
			keystroke "i" using {command down, option down}
		end if
		
		-- Print; wait until the sheet is visible	
		click menu item "Print…" of menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1
		
		repeat until sheet 1 of window 1 exists
		end repeat

This file has been truncated. show original

But that was for a task I had to do 5-7 times a week - not sure I’d invest the effort is it’s just once a month.

Coulmac · November 17, 2018, 9:25am

Thanks, I’ll give these suggestions a go. I thought there might be an automator solution which could make a service which could be assigned to a keyboard shortcut. But I don’t have the skills sadly.

JohnAtl · November 17, 2018, 11:31am

Have you tried the DEVONthink browser extensions and bookmarklets?
https://www.devontechnologies.com/download/extras-and-manuals.html

Sander · November 17, 2018, 11:35am

It is possible to have an automator solution. My assumption is that the link in your email is a clickable link in your mail.

An initial (working) version is:

The three blocks of applescript that are used in this DevonSave-service are to convert an RTF text to an URL (which is surprisingly non-user friendly), are used from https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/196382

Block 1 of AppleScript: is the part Get the Data on https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/196382

Block 2 of AppleScript: is the part Extract the Link HTML on https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/196382

Block 3 of AppleScript: is the part Load the HTML and Extract the URL on https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/196382