I’ve enjoyed the first two episodes and so they’ve inspired me to start automating some of my repeated tasks. Here’s the first I’d love to try and could use some help. I’m looking at the options in Automator and not quite seeing what I want.
I save a pdf document to the same folder on my computer (Dropbox) every week (nothing else goes in this folder);
I create an email, attach that newest PDF, and send it to the same three people each week;
The subject of the email is always the same, except for a date: “7/29/18 Draft For Review”
This seems like a prime candidate for automation, no? Thanks!
I’m on OSX 10.13.6 and use Outlook for email, though it is a Gmail managed account.
Automator has a mail step that uses Apple Mail I believe, but unless Microsoft. reated an Outlook version then you wouldn’t have a nice easy way of using Automator to send from Outlook.
Just by way of an alternative, maybe IFTTT might work for you. It could mail out a link to the PDF automatically. There may be some limitations on naming the subject line though. Zapier might give more options around that.
Also, what about simply sharing the folder with everyone and if necessary just having a notification automated when a new file is added to the folder?
Automation is about efficiency and sometimes doing things a different way rather than just automating what you can do can yield even better results. But circumstances vary and there isn’t always a solution that is perfect for all scenarios.
No, Outlook doesn’t show up in Automator for me. I wonder why? I’m using Outlook 2016 and, from the icon, it looks like you are too?
(Thanks everyone else for the help and advice! If this path works - Outlook via Automator - I think that will be best so I want to try it first. If it doesn’t pan out I’ll try the other options you’ve all mentioned.)
Edit: I did try this yesterday, come to think of it, and it doesn’t really work as-is. I’m tweaking it but don’t think it’s the ideal solution for this.
