sorry im a n00b to the whole applescript

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

I’m just recently a converted apple person and I have a task that I think AppleScript could help me immensely. Unfortunately, I am an idiot when it comes to writing code.

Here’s what I’m trying to do. I have about 2500 images for a existing website, and we are getting ready to switch web hosts. With that, we are also changing the way that the image files are named. That said I have an excel file that has the complete list of all the file names with the corresponding new file name paired with it in the spreadsheet. So what I would like to do is use the excel sheet to find and rename the old file names to the new file names. For example, it would look in the excel file and find image name one and then search a specified folder for the matching file and then go back to the excel file and take the corresponding new file name and rename the old file.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have to have all these done by the 15th and I would rather spend the holidays with family than having to manually rename each image.

#2

kid:

Anything involving scripting Excel is difficult at best. Microsoft has an extensive library for both Word and Excel, but it is based on Visual Basic, and adapted to Applescript (AS) as an afterthought.

That said, I still believe your project to be rather simple, depending on the location(s) of the files. My recommendation is to export the desired data out of excel, into a comma-delimited file(s), and then we could easily put a short script together to tackle the renaming project.

I am more than happy to assist, guide, coach, whatever. If you continue to post here, others will likely join in (there are a few fabulous scripters out there, and they pop in once in a while to help us average types out) and you should have this done well before your deadline.

#3

This is excellent advice, known to work because I have done it. You can even get it back into excel after the fact if you must.