By using a Shell script in an Automator Folder Action you can create a "drop zone" folder that moves any file placed into it. By using a Shell script it is easy to add new conditions and destination folders.
Check out Automatically Organize Files With an Automator Folder Action Shell Script at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.
Here’s the script I’m using in the video:
for f in "$@" do DEST="" if [[ $f == *"dailyreport"* ]] then DEST="/Users/macmost/Documents/Daily Reports" elif [[ $f == *"tpsreport"* ]] DEST="/Users/macmost/Documents/TPS Reports" elif [[ $f == *".txt" ]] DEST="/Users/macmost/Documents/Text Files" fi if [[ $DEST != "" ]] then osascript -e "display notification \"Moved $f to $DEST\"" mv $f $DEST elif osascript -e "display notification \"$f Not Moved.\"" fi done
Shouldn’t there be ‘then’ after every elif?
Sumanth: Not in a shell script. Try it and see.
Hi, this was really helpful – I’m a very amateur coder and have never done shell script before. The one bit of feedback I have is that I couldn’t get this to work without adding a ‘then’ after every ‘elif’. That was the case with /bin/zsh and /bin/bash (the default) whatever those mean… Otherwise, really useful and has got me started. All I need now is to understand more conditional arguments such as AND, OR etc. Also, would be really helpful to understand how to add tags to files! Thanks!