Noodlesoft Forums

Hello all -

I've made a little video about how I use Hazel to streamline as much as possible the process of getting paper into digital form!

http://www.statusq.org/archives/2013/03/03/4867/

I hope it might be useful to others.

However, I did discover a slight challenge. The ScanSnap Manager software saves the incoming PDFs to a folder, and Hazel takes things from there, running my custom automator action etc.

But Hazel seems to be a little over-eager, starting work on the files before they've finished saving. Perhaps the ScanSnap software opens and closes the file repeatedly for each page, or something like that. In this particular case, I can fix the problem by taking Hazel out of the first stage, and telling the scanning software to open the file using the Automator action, which was in any case the first Hazel rule.

But I was wondering, for future reference, whether anyone had seen anything similar in other situations, and whether there were other good fixes? I guess, if a quick response is not vital, you could include the condition that the last modified time is not in the last minute, or something like that?

Thanks for the video.

If the software creating the file doesn't lock the file properly, then you will have to have Hazel wait as you suggested, by checking the date modified.