Dear Mr. Waldie: Please accept my apologies for the long question. I'm hoping to make my life easier using Automator, and I don't know if my goals are realistic.
(Entourage-Talk subscribers, I apologize for the repetition, but I believe my aspirations are of general interest to Entourage users who live with more than one Mac) I'm a long time end-user (as long as there is in the Mac universe, my 1st 128K Mac purchased within the shadow of Cupertino on day one in 1984). I found your site in Macworld December 2005's Automator articles. I'm trying to automate a repetitive workflow. I have no scripting experience. Here's my challenge: I use a G5 dual at home, a 15 inch Al-Book at work and on the road. I keep my mail, contacts, and calendar in Entourage 2004. When I'm preparing to leave home, I use "Synchronize! Pro X" to mount my PowerBook's ~\home directory on my dual G5 and place the newest copy of the "Main User Identity" database file from MS Office (a single huge file that contains contacts, email, calendar) on both machines. I've learned through painful experience that none of the main MS Office applications needs to be running for this database file to be changed; if "Office Notifications" (a background task that pops up reminder dialogs about appointments and tasks) are turned on, that can change the database file. I'm not certain whether just HAVING notifications turned on changes the database file, or whether a reminder must come due. The "Database Daemon" (or "Microsoft Database Daemon" -- the task can have one name or the other in Activity Monitor) remains active whenever Office Notifications are turned on, whether or not the application "Office Notifications" is running. The background task that presents reminders to the user is sometimes named "Database Daemon", sometimes "Microsoft Database Daemon". It appears in Activity Monitor whenever I launch an application from the Office 2004 suite and remains active until I quit from every Office Application, even if "MS Office Notifications" are turned off. It seems to me that automating my workflow would need to do the following things: 1. Make certain that NO MS Office application is running, and that "Office Notifications" are turned off (ideally on both machines). 2. Open the "Synchronize! Pro X" document that does the synchronization. 3. Run the synchronization routine (which also puts my newest Quicken file on both machines and synchronizes a few other folders in my ~\home directories). 4. Quit "Synchronize! Pro X". 5. Dismount the PowerBook's directory from the desktop Mac's DeskTop. Because there are days I'll not use the PowerBook AT ALL away from home, I don't turn on Office Notifications on the PowerBook, but that's a habit I've developed because I haven't USED notifications, fearing changes to the main user identity database file even if I don't use an Office Application. If I could automate ALL of this workflow, I would start using the notifications, turning them ON on the desktop Mac when I've done the sync on arriving home, turning them OFF on the desktop Mac before leaving home -- and turning them ON on the PowerBook as I prepare to leave home. I've looked at the Automator sites (including your own, of course), and they list "Automator-ready" applications. Neither MS Office nor "Synchronize! Pro X" are on any of these lists. Also, I am a total novice at this, so I don't know if Automator even has the capability of doing conditional actions; e.g., "check to see if the PowerBook is already mounted as a server volume on the G5", or "check to see if Office Notifications are turned on, and turn them off if so." I'm certainly not asking you to tell me how to do all this, but I'm hoping that you could tell me whether it's POSSIBLE using Automator. I don't know how to write AppleScripts. I'm a long term participant in the "Entourage-Talk" listserv, and I'm posting this question there as well. It may be that a totally different solution to this problem may surface, because Microsoft has made public statements about support for Apple's Sync Services, but when and in what form that will appear are not known to mere end users :-) Thank you so much. Jim Robertson -- -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.letterrip.com/> old-archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
