Saving PDF Documents or Receipts by Just Printing

Here’s a great tip on automating the creation of PDF files for anything you want to print. I like to save a copy of receipts of online purchases or transactions. I also like to keep personal and business receipts in separate folders. Your Mac already has this functionality available in the standard Print Dialog box.

The Print Dialog box has a drop down that says PDF, this menu has some ready made workflows that allow you to:

• Save as PDF…
• Save as PostScript…
• Fax PDF…
• Mail PDF
• Save as PDF-X
• Save PDF to iPhoto
• Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder

The last one will take whatever you are printing and create a PDF file and save it in the Web Receipts folder in your Documents folder. Very handy. And you can just use this workflow and stop reading this tip. But I want to show you how to take this idea a little further and create another workflow to give you the option to create the PDFs in another folder, and make sure you don’t over write other PDFs. I’ll also show you a basic on how Automator works so you can create your own Automator workflows for just about anything.

1. Open Automator in Applications.
2. Automator will prompt you to “Select a starting point to open a new workflow:” Choose Custom.
3. On the left pane, open the Library item, if not already open, and select Files & Folders.
4. When this workflow is run it will take the PDF file that is generated and modify the filename. This will ensure that the file created will be unique and not over write an existing file. So the first action we want to do is Rename Finder Items.
5. Scroll down and find the Rename Finder Items action in the list and click and drag it to the empty grey area on the right

   

6. When you add the action a drop down box will appear asking you to add a Copy Finder Items action. Answer Don’t Add because we don’t want to keep the original file.

   

7. We will be the defaults for this action so leave all options as they are. The action will append the current date to the end of the file name. To make it more unique, we will add another action to append the current time.
8. Add another Rename Finder Items action for appending the Time. After adding the action change the Format to Hour Minute to append the current hour and minute to the filename as in the picture below.

   
   

9. The final step is to add the step to tell Automator where to save the file. By default there is already a folder named Web Receipts in your Documents folder in your Home folder.
10. You can use this default folder or you can create a subfolder so you can separate personal and company receipts. Run the Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder flow for saving personal items.

    

11. Click and drag New Folder as the final step. Name is the Folder name you want to use. Where is the location of the folder. For example, Where can be Web Receipts and Name can be Company. This will create the PDF file in the Company subfolder of the Web Receipts folder.
12. Now you need to save the workflow. Since this is probably the first time you have created a PDF workflow, you will need to create the PDF Services folder in your Library folder, if it doesn’t exist. Save the workflow by going to the File menu and selecting Save. Browse to Home/Library and click on New Folder to create a new folder called PDF Services and then save the workflow with a name like, Save PDF to Company Folder.
13. Now try to print something.
14. In the PDF drop down box select Edit Menu

    

15. Click on the + button and browse to the Home/Library/PDF Services folder and select the workflow you just created.
16. Click OK. Now you have added the flow to every print menu in Mac OS X so you can create a PDF from every program. Is that cool or what?
17. There is one catch. Major Mac OS X update, i.e. 10.4 to 10.5, can change the syntax of automator actions enough that the workflow may not work after the update. So test the workflow after a major update. If it doesn’t work, just open the flow again in Automator and select the actions so Automator updates the action. Then re-save the workflow. It should work again.