Create an Evernote Import Folder for Mac

Updated on June 5, 2015

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The Mac has many different tools to automate and streamline tasks for you. One of my favorite is something called a “Folder Action”. It’s a special type of AppleScript and I’ve created this one which works with Evernote to demonstrate the concept.

Evernote Import Folder

This post will walk you through how to create a special folder which helps you organize files as you import them into Evernote. Whenever you drop or save files into it, a window pops up that allows you to add tags and to direct them into a specific notebook. Once those files have been sent to Evernote, the originals are silently moved to the Trash.1

Cool, right?

Usage

I use this workflow primarily in two ways: Scanning paper documents with my ScanSnap — and as a “Virtual Hard Drive” to save items directly into Evernote.

The ScanSnap Series of Document Scanners are currently my favorite devices for ordinary people to scan in all of their paper documents. They’re easy, reliable, and fast! The included ScanSnap software can be set up to allow direct scanning to Evernote, but it leaves behind a copy of the original… which causes an accumulation of PDF files very quickly. By using this “Evernote Dropbox Folder”, I can keep my hard drive clear of unneeded copies once they’re in Evernote.

I can also use the folder as a place to save documents from any program quickly into Evernote. Getting a copy into Evernote is now just as simple as selecting “Save As…” and pointing the file into your automated Evernote folder. I’ve also added the folder to my Finder sidebar so I can also easily drag in the files I want to archive.

In both cases, the included tagging and notebook selection window lets me organize things on the way into Evernote — which helps me to not be so lazy about keeping things tidy! 😉

Installation

Here’s how to set things up, step-by-step:

  1. Download and extract this ZIP file:
    Download Folder Action Files
  2. (OPTIONAL) If you’d like to customize the way the script operates, you can open the script in your favorite AppleScript Editor and read the instructions inside to do things like set default tags, turn the tagging dialog box off, etc.
  3. Copy the included Folder Action Script to the /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts directory on your Hard Drive. (You’ll probably need to Authenticate as an Admin to do so)
  4. Create a Folder on your Desktop to serve as your “Evernote Dropbox”. Personally, I call mine “@EVERNOTE” — but you can call it whatever you like.
  5. Activate the Folder Action by Control-Clicking on this folder (a.k.a., “Right Clicking”) and selecting “Folder Action Setup” from the “Services” menu:
  6. Select the Evernote Script from the Folder Action Setup menu and select the Activate box, if present:

Fit and Finish

The Folder should be working at this point, but I like to do a couple of other things to make it a little more useful — and to remind me to use it!

First, I change the icon of the folder so it stands out on the Desktop. I’ve hacked together an icon and I’ve included it in the ZIP file for your convenience.

    1. To change your icon from the standard folder graphic, open the image file that I included in the ZIP file and open it with Preview. Press Command-A (⌘A) to select the whole image and then press Command-C (⌘C) to copy it to the Clipboard.
    2. To change to the new image, highlight your new Evernote Desktop folder and select “Get Info” — either from the Finder Menu=>File Menu or by pressing Command-I (⌘I). A window will open with information about the folder… and at the top will be the graphic for the folder. Click on it and you’ll see a subtle blue highlighting around the image. This means that it’s ready for our new image.

    1. Press Command-V (⌘V) to paste the image and — voila — you’ve got yourself a custom icon!

  1. As I mentioned, I also like to create a shortcut in the Finder Sidebar. To create it, just drag-and-drop the Folder into Finder’s “Places” to add a shortcut. Now whenever you are saving a document, you can quickly select Evernote as the location to save your file!

That’s it! Let me know how it works for you in the comments below… and if something seems broken, please submit your Bug Reports here!

If you liked this project, click here to let me know!

  1. The ‘silent’ part is a new addition I added when updating the code to fix some bugs. You’re welcome. []

87 Responses to “Create an Evernote Import Folder for Mac”

  1. Sonny Byrd June 7, 2010 at 5:00 pm #

    Your readers may be interested to learn about Shoeboxed.com, a web app that scans and organizes receipts and business cards for you, which can then be imported into Evernote and many other apps as well. I work for Shoeboxed — full disclosure — so if you have questions or would like to learn more, please contact me or visit http://www.shoeboxed.com

    Sonny Byrd
    Shoeboxed.com
    [email protected]

    • Justin Lancy June 8, 2010 at 6:51 am #

      HI Sonny,

      Thanks for sharing this.

      FYI — Anyone with something to share — or a product that they think Veritrope.com readers would be interested in — can use the contact form to let me know about it!

  2. Nashguy June 20, 2010 at 11:22 pm #

    THANK YOU! I found this very helpful – and will be donating!

    However, I took it a step further, and wondering if you might have some ideas here. I want to use it between my iMac with the ScanSnap attached, and my MacBook Pro, which is where Evernote runs. I’m using the product DropBox to share files and folders between the machines.

    I’ve configured the folder within Dropbox, watching the folder from the MacBook Pro, which is where Evernote runs. Things seem to work with one exception. The script wants to import the invisible .DS_Store file, which I believe is an Apple creation used in file sharing environments.

    I prefer to have the ScanSnap attached to the iMac because I don’t have to disconnect/reconnect when I take the MacBook on the road.

    And I’ve not yet seen a fully blessed way of using Evernote between two machines, so your solution was particularly intriguing.

    Thoughts?

    • Justin Lancy June 20, 2010 at 11:56 pm #

      This is a very interesting “use case”! 😉

      I think there are a few viable approaches here but, when I get a chance, what I’ll try to do is incorporate some AppleScript code that will filter out the .DS_Store files.

      Any objections with being the Beta Tester on this? If not, use the Contact Form to let me know and we’ll coordinate directly.

    • Sam F June 23, 2014 at 10:15 am #

      This is great! However, I made one change to the script that I think is generally useful, so should be incorporated back into your script (at least with an optional flag): With my Neat scanner, the fast “scan to pdf” button doesn’t give you the option to give a title to your scan. Therefore all scanned files are just called “Scan.” Therefore, you need to go into Evernote after the import to modify the title.

      I added a simple title_dialog that comes up before the tags_dialog, asking the user for the title of the note. When creating the note, I then used:

      create note from file new_item notebook EVnotebook tags EVTag title EVTitle

      I can see this wouldn’t be useful if your scanner requires you to pick a title in the first place, but if it doesn’t then this option would be very necessary.

      Anyway, thanks!

  3. Angela June 29, 2010 at 11:19 pm #

    Does this work for PC, or just for Mac? Sounds like a brilliant idea, and I’d love to donate!

    • Justin Lancy June 30, 2010 at 3:29 pm #

      You know, Angela — I think that it would probably be possible, but it’s not as straight-forward a proposition as it is on the Mac: AppleScript and Automator make it really easy to put together solutions like this (part of what brought me over from the PC world years ago).

      There are programs for Windows that can do the “Watched Folder” thing, and Evernote has something called ENScript.exe which lets you write a small program that would import a file into Evernote. The difference is that (I think) it might be a little more involved to write it in a way that would allow you to select notebooks and tags from a menu.

      Any Windows / Virtual Basic gurus out there who have played around with this type of thing?

      • Larry Fliegelman July 25, 2010 at 10:12 pm #

        Thank you. This is exactly what I was looking for. Works perfectly and took only a few moments to set up. I tweeted about this. Thanks again.

        • Justin Lancy July 26, 2010 at 12:56 am #

          Glad you like it, Larry!

    • David February 13, 2011 at 12:49 am #

      This feature is built-in to the Windows version of Evernote.

      • Marc October 2, 2011 at 4:18 pm #

        This script is awesome, but, unless I’m not missing something here, it does not enable the very same functionality to be found in the windows version of evernote 🙁

        Back when I was still using evernote for windows, I could define several auto-importing profiles (depending on the targeted evernote notebook). The cool thing is that evernote itself would keep the file that I had just dropped in the folder thus allowing me to keep the original file…

        • Justin Lancy October 2, 2011 at 7:29 pm #

          Hi Marc — Thanks for the kind comment!

          The nice thing about AppleScript is that it’s pretty easy to make it do **EXACTLY** what you want it to do!

          For example — To keep the script from deleting the files, all you have to do is remove this line of code:

             tell application "Finder" to delete added_items

          It’s also fairly straightforward to save a few different versions of the script that handles files in different ways (e.g., creating an auto-import profile of sorts). You can then just drop your file into the folder which will import it where (and how) you want!

          For future revisions of the script, I’ll probably include some “switches” to make customization even easier…. but hope this helps for now! 😀

          • Marc October 3, 2011 at 3:17 am #

            Hi there,

            yeah, I know I know… yesterday evening I spent a couple of hours playing around with your script! 🙂

            But the thing is, I just feel I’m starting to go back to my linux days seeking Evernote for Mac to enable me do things that Evernote for Windows actually does out of the box.

            Back when I had Windows XP, I had several “import folder” profiles. I would then have the software of my scanner store the scanned files in one of the watched folders and Evernote would do the rest, keeping track of the things that had already been imported before… I would swear that even if the filename was changed, Evernote would not reimport the file (I’m not sure though), suggesting that Evernote keeps a database somehow I guess…

            What I want to say is that you can get really far with scripting, I know (have used debian for years), but I feel somehow that Mac users in this case have been left out for this and other features should be provided by Evernote itself.

            Thanks a milion for your extremely helpful script and for your prompt answer

  4. Fred Avolio July 27, 2010 at 4:29 pm #

    “It’s a little different when doing this with Leopard…”

    Any hints?

    • Fred Avolio July 28, 2010 at 12:22 pm #

      Ah. Answering my o9wn question. Because, I’d never done this and poked around a bit, I thought it was more involved. It looks like, for Leopard, Step 4 is to select Enable Folder Actions … and step 5 is Attach a Folder Action …

      • Fred Avolio July 28, 2010 at 12:35 pm #

        But, I guess the script needs rewriting for Leopard.

        • Justin Lancy July 28, 2010 at 11:30 pm #

          Hi Fred — I’m traveling right now, thus the delay in responding.

          Kudos to you for answering the initial part of the question!

          That said, it sounds like it still may not be working for you from your last comment. Is that the case?

          I won’t have access to a 10.5.x machine until I return home, so can anyone else running Leopard give Fred a hand in the meantime?

          (And Fred — If you figure it out in the interim, let us know what you did!)

          • Ed Roden August 27, 2010 at 7:23 pm #

            I just did it on a 10.5.8 machine, and the script works great!

            Thanks for the script!

  5. Greg Ramsaran August 21, 2010 at 4:19 pm #

    Using Evernote Version 1.11.0 Beta 1, and it doesn’t seem to actually work. I get the dialog box, but no note is created. Reverted to Version 1.10.1 (93489) and still didn’t work. Any ideas?

    • Justin Lancy August 22, 2010 at 2:16 am #

      That’s weird — I’m running Evernote Version 1.11.0 Beta 2 and it’s working fine!

      A few questions:

      What kind of files are you dropping in the folder?
      Do you have a Premium Account?
      What is the source of the files (i.e., your Desktop, a Networked drive, etc.)

      • Greg Ramsaran August 22, 2010 at 11:31 pm #

        It’s a PDF that’s being dropped to a folder on the desktop. Just tried again on Beta 2 and same thing, got the Pop-up, but no note created.

        • Justin Lancy August 22, 2010 at 11:58 pm #

          We’ll need to look at the log together to understand why the PDF is not importing!

          1. In the Mac client, go to Help->Activity Log (see picture below)
            Activity Log
          2. Once the Log Viewer opens, select “Save As…” and save the file to your Desktop.
          3. Fill out the Bug Report and attach the Log File to it.
            Upload
          4. I’ll take a look and see if I can figure it out!

            One more quick question: Do other file types work? (e.g., Non-PDF files)

          • Matthew September 13, 2010 at 10:50 pm #

            Not working for me either. Evernote fails to respond after launching the script now as well. Mutiple notebooks get highlited and won’t respond to clicking. I’ve wanted something like this for a while now, so I’m bummed it’s not working for me. Thanks in advance.

          • Justin Lancy September 13, 2010 at 11:02 pm #

            I’m sorry that things aren’t working for you!

            Let’s get to the bottom of what’s happening on your machine: Could you fill out this Bug Report Form with some details about your setup and we’ll take it from there?

  6. Patrick Rushton October 17, 2010 at 9:05 am #

    @Matthew – I had the same problem (Evernote not responding and multiple notebooks getting highlighted).

    I figured this was probably because I had renamed my default Notebook (to “Inbox”), and was able to fix the problem by editing the EvernoteFolder Action.scpt, changing the line towards the top of the code:

    property EVnotebook : “”

    to

    property EVnotebook : “Inbox”

    Obviously replace Inbox with the name of your default notebook.

    • Justin Lancy October 17, 2010 at 12:26 pm #

      Thanks for putting that out there for people, Patrick!

      Since Matthew left his comment, I have heard from some people on the Evernote Mac team that there are some situations where Evernote gets confused and the multiple notebook thing occurs — one of them being when AppleScript sends an empty value as the notebook name. The reason that I left it blank in the first place was to allow users to change their default notebooks without having to go back and adjust the script. A blank value should equal “send to default”, but instead it was one of the things that could trigger that situation.

      I’ve been told that they’re reworking the left panel for their upcoming release and that this bug will be fixed. Anyone experiencing this issue can either wait for the new Evernote or adjust the script as Patrick has shown!

      • JMichael November 19, 2011 at 11:21 pm #

        I’m running the latest ver of EN Mac (3.0.4) and the script will NOT import with the Notebook set to “”.

        I changed the Script to set the default Notebook to “Inbox” (which is what I have in EN), and it works fine.

  7. Yaxi August 3, 2011 at 10:31 am #

    I love your script! Thanks very much!

    Is it possible to modify a little bit?
    In my case, I would change some settings like this,
    Default note: inbox
    Default tag: @evertrash

    I tried to tweek your script, but failed to save.
    Sorry for this stupid question. I am a new mac user.

    Thanks for your help!
    Yaxi

    • Justin Lancy August 3, 2011 at 10:53 am #

      Try This!

      1. To change the Default Tag, find the line of the script that says:
        set defaultTag to "@Evernote"

        Try changing it to:

        set defaultTag to "@evertrash"
      2. I’m guessing that you wanted to change the Notebook to “inbox”, right? To do that, try changing the Property at the start of the script to this:
        property EVnotebook : "inbox"

      Hope that this helps!

  8. Ed August 9, 2011 at 3:17 pm #

    I recently moved from windows and missed this functionality. The script seems to work very well, thank you.

    I’m interested to see if, when importing a series of text files, the file date/time could be entered as the note’s date and time in evernote. I’ll try to dig into applescript (I’m a newbie at this) and if I find any solution I’ll post here.

    Thanks again….

    • Justin Lancy August 9, 2011 at 3:33 pm #

      First things first: Thanks for the kind comment, Ed!

      I am fairly certain that you can modify the code to do this (I’ve done similar things in the past) and I’m sure your fellow Mac users would love it if you sorted this out! My approach to something like this would be:

      1. Add a line of code that tests if the file is a text file
      2. If so, grab the file’s date information
      3. Add one final line after the item is created in Evernote to see if there was a text file date grabbed earlier on and, if so;
      4. Change the date of the Evernote item to the text file date

      Let us know your progress and, if you get stuck, I’m sure someone can help you along!

      • Ed August 9, 2011 at 4:06 pm #

        Just tried modifying the script as shown below:

        *
        *
        *
        repeat with i from 1 to number of items in added_items
        set new_item to item i of added_items
        tell application “Finder”
        set creationDate to creation date of item i of added_items
        end tell
        create note from file new_item notebook EVnotebook tags EVTag created creationDate
        (*DELETE THE TEMP FILE/FOLDER *)
        end repeat

        *
        *
        *
        As I mentioned I’m completely new to applescript so I’m sorta feeling my way thru this. The above edit didn’t seem to work. I’ll post more if/when I’m successful.

        -Ed

        • Ed August 9, 2011 at 4:41 pm #

          Actually, the code above works…I didn’t properly update the linkage between the new version of the code and the folder actions. Once I did that properly, the code above properly adds the date and time of the file creation as the data and time of the note within evernote.

          -Ed

  9. Menno October 12, 2011 at 3:49 am #

    I’m with Justin on the .DS_store issue. I’m on Lion and have put the Evernote folder in /User. Evernote see’s new .DS_store files every now and then tries to import those into Evernote 🙁

    Most happy to receive a patch for this. Willing to donate for this 🙂

  10. Menno October 12, 2011 at 4:28 am #

    Regarding the .DS_store issue, until now this only happened once (upon creation of the .DS_store file by OSX?), so it looks like there is no issue 🙂

    • Justin Lancy October 12, 2011 at 12:34 pm #

      Glad you worked it out!

      I’m pretty sure that there’s a way to ensure that no .DS_store files get handled (in my notes somewhere). Right now, I’m working on the site’s new design — so it may be a while before I take a shot at this. 😀

  11. JMichael November 19, 2011 at 11:13 pm #

    First, thank you VERY MUCH for sharing this excellent script!

    While I was at first put off because Evernote did not provide the same feature for Mac as Windows, I now actually like it because I can easily customize the import process on the Mac.

    I have modified the script using the above code from Ed to set the Creation Date of the Note.

    But I need some help for further modifications. Can you give me any guidance or documentation on how to:

    (1) Set the Body of the Note using rich text
    what I want is:
    — First Line: File Name in BOLD
    — Line 2: File Creation Date
    — Line 3: HTML Horizontal Rule
    (2) Set the Author field
    (3) Run the script without the User Input form and just display a Growl msg when complete.

    Thanks again.

    • Justin Lancy November 22, 2011 at 12:07 pm #

      Hi JMichael,

      Thanks for your kind comment — always makes me happy to know that readers are using (and enjoying) the stuff they find here!

      You put your finger on exactly why I like using AppleScript: Customizing things makes using your computer feel more natural because you’re able to inject your thought process into what the computer doing for you.

      So, let me try to put you on to the right path with modifying this script. To change the way the note appears in Evernote, for example, you just need to know a little HTML to format the note (how to do a bold and create a horizontal line) and alter/add your code to the part of the script which creates the note.

      Right now, I don’t believe you can get the Author info via AppleScript. You should bug them about that! 😉

      In a future version of the script, I intend to make it easier to customize (including turning off the tagging dialog). In the interim, you can just comment it out of there and make the variable names manually for the tag/notebook names.

      Hope this helps!

  12. Haakon January 19, 2012 at 9:11 pm #

    Thanks for sharing this script, Justin!

    I would really like it skip the dialog box though. It would be great to be able to throw a load of PDFs into the folder, and then be sure they all end up in Evernote for later sorting.

    Do you think you will add this option anytime soon?

    • Justin Lancy January 20, 2012 at 3:04 pm #

      I’m very glad you’re enjoying it, Haakon!

      The script is probably due for an update sometime soon and I’m considering some approaches which would allow exactly that type of customization. Check back here or Follow Me on Twitter for the latest updates.

  13. Polo June 10, 2012 at 7:45 pm #

    Justin, thanks for this wonderful script. One thing I would add is a line or two in the script to change the file properties. Not sure if file permissions is an issue at all but it could be if the @Evernote folder is actually being synced from another machine or even through internet. However, a problem exists (that’s sure) if incoming files are locked.

    Your script won’t be able to delete them and they stay sitting in the @Evernote folder. Because of that sometimes I have hard time to tell whether the file wasn’t just trashed because it was locked or whether something went wrong and your script didn’t run (e.g. your script only runs if Evernote is running, if Evernote is not running then script does nothing and files, although placed in the @Evernote folder won’t get action.)

    I would suggest adding a line to remove (at least) the file properties, such as FILE LOCK to make sure the file gets trashed.

    I am not a programmer, just an aspiring tinker maybe. So I searched on the web and found 2 scripts which are recommended for removing the file lock properties. Not sure which one should I use? I suspect it should be put just above the line in this line in your script… .” tell application “Finder” to delete added_items”

    ————————-

    tell application "Finder"
              set locked of every file of folder theFolder to false
    end tell

    -------------------------

    do shell script "/usr/bin/chflags -R nouchg " & itemPath
    -------------------------

    Thank you!

  14. polo June 10, 2012 at 11:53 pm #

    Justin ,did a little bit more search and found a script which works in folder action and resets the permissions to read-write for everybody… Not the elegant way but does the job, albeit doesn’t help with security much. Also did some reading on ACL permissions and it seems that’s the way to go.

    Here is the script for folder action to change permissions of the folder contents.. (I am not the author, I just scraped it off a website, I forgot which)

    ———–

    on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
     tell application "Finder"
     set fold_name to the name of this_folder
     try
     repeat with i from 1 to number of items in added_items
     set new_item to item i of added_items
     set the item_path to the quoted form of the POSIX path of new_item
     do shell script ("/bin/chmod -R ugo+wr " & item_path)
     end repeat
     end try
     end tell
    end adding folder items to

    —————

    • Justin Lancy June 11, 2012 at 12:00 pm #

      Thanks for this! Always appreciate people who roll up their sleeves and contribute in whatever way they can.

      I have been waiting to update many of the scripts here (and the whole website, actually) until Apple makes a public statement about the future of AppleScript. (Hopefully, we’ll get some indication at this week’s WWDC!)

      That said, I’ll roll this — and a few other things — into the next update.

  15. Abb August 30, 2012 at 10:50 pm #

    I love this! Thanks

  16. Lynn October 28, 2012 at 7:47 pm #

    Hi Justin,

    Thanks for the great script. After going paperless about 4 months ago, I use it regularly.

    Is there a relatively easy way to modify it so that instead of entering the tags in the dialog, I can enter/change the title? I’ve looked around and tried to find an AppleScript library of Evernote definitions/terms to give it a go myself, but I’m in a bit over my head.

    Thanks,

    Lynn

  17. Rasmus November 10, 2012 at 7:27 am #

    Thanks!!! Just GREAT!

    @bjerngaard

  18. TJ January 23, 2013 at 10:48 am #

    Hi,
    This looks like a great script to reduce paper clutter. Any caveats if I try it with mac os x mountain lion 10.8.2?
    Thanks,
    TJ

    • Justin Lancy February 13, 2013 at 8:02 pm #

      There shouldn’t be but, if you discover any, just let me know via the bug report form!

  19. Stephen March 13, 2013 at 12:09 am #

    Hi – great script.
    I’m running EN 5.0.6 on Mountain Lion. This script didn’t work the first times I was using it when I chose “Use default notebook”. The tag was created in Evernote, but the actual note never was.

    Once I pressed the other button to chose from a list of notebooks, the script started working. Now the “default notebook” button is working too.

    I posted this mostly so that if others encounter the same issue they’ll know to try the “chose notebook from list” option once and then things should start working for them.

    I have absolutely no clue why this is.

    • Justin Lancy March 13, 2013 at 2:01 am #

      Anyone else having the same issue?

  20. jan May 28, 2013 at 2:20 pm #

    @Justin: Yes, I encountered the same problem as Stephen on Mac OSX 10.8.3 and Evernote 5.1.3. The note was not created after I first chose “default notebook”.

  21. Anna June 16, 2013 at 1:50 pm #

    Hi Justin!

    Thank you for this awesome script, it works flawlessly and is so, so useful…
    I added Growl support to the script (since I turned off the dialog I wanted to get some sort of “success” confirmation when the script does its thing) and I couldn’t be happier :))

    Again, thank you so much for sharing your work!

    Cheers, Anna

  22. Andrew June 22, 2013 at 10:46 am #

    Probably a silly question but on 10.8.4 I dont have this directory

    /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts

    where should i place the file

    • Justin Lancy June 23, 2013 at 1:15 am #

      Not a silly question!

      First, I’d double-check that you’re looking in the right place by trying to open the folder in Finder. To do that, open Finder and press

      SHIFT + ⌘ + G

      This will open the “Go To Folder…” window. When the window appears, paste in the path

      /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts

      If you get an error that the folder cannot be found, I’d backspace in the window and change the path to

      /Library/Scripts/

      Finder will open the main “Scripts” folder and, from here, you can easily create a new “Folder Action Scripts” folder to place the script into.

      Good luck! 🙂

  23. Brendan July 28, 2013 at 11:22 pm #

    Thank you for this script. Very helpful. I had an older version, but the updated one is very nice with the options to turn features On/Off.

    One question. I’d like to be able to set the created/modified dates on the note to match the created/modified dates of the file. This is for when I import older files, I’d like the dates on the note to match. I’ve tried figuring it out on my own but no luck. Do you know what I could add to your script to get that to work?

  24. JMichael November 1, 2013 at 11:19 pm #

    Justin, many thanks again for a GREAT script. Looks like it is currently compatible with Lion, and Mt. Lion.

    Have you tested it on new new Mavericks OS?

    • Justin Lancy November 17, 2013 at 3:27 am #

      Hi J Michael – Several people are reporting Mavericks issues. I’ll try to take a look soon!

  25. Scott November 2, 2013 at 5:55 pm #

    Hi, this is such an awesome script. I have only just stumbled across it. However having just upgraded to a new MBA with OSX Mavericks on it I cant get it to work. Anyone else have luck with Mavericks? Or am I doing something wrong… TIA -Scott

    • Justin Lancy November 17, 2013 at 3:26 am #

      Several people are reporting Mavericks issues. I’ll try to take a look soon!

  26. Andrew November 14, 2013 at 2:11 pm #

    Great little script although I wanted to make some changes to the “User Switches” but ran into an issue. I apologize in advance as I am a novice programmer. I wanted to change the default Tag from “@Evernote” to my own tag and replaced the value in quotes using the AppleScriptEditor, however when I try to save or compile the change I get a Syntax Error, “Expected end of line but found application constant or consideration.” and the word “note” is highlighted in the line “create note from file new_item” in the — MAKE THE NOTE IN EVERNOTE section.

    Any thoughts on how I can make this simple change or what I might be doing wrong? Otherwise it seems to function properly I just can’t make any changes to the script without getting this error even though Im not messing with that section of the script.

    • Justin Lancy November 17, 2013 at 3:09 am #

      Hi Andrew,

      Not really sure… Out of curiosity, does the tag that you want to use have any “special characters” in it? (e.g., quotation marks, apostrophes, etc.)

      • Andrew November 17, 2013 at 9:00 am #

        Nope, no special characters, but I don’t thin the changes I am making to the user switch sections is causing the script to not compile. It seems like there is a problem in another section that prevents me form modifying the script at all and saving my changes. I can run the script as is but if I make any change a where and save it I will give me the error.

  27. Al December 6, 2013 at 4:19 am #

    Hi
    I’m using Mavericks and tried this script last week. I have never used apple script before and know nothing about programming but at first enjoyed being able to customise. Unfortunately that pleasure has turned to severe frustration. The closer i get to thinking all is good, it stops working again. Don’t know why. i have redownloaded the script numerous times in case i had stuffed up the code somehow. added the new one to the library with a customised tag of either: “DragNdropped2Evernote”, “ScanSnappedDOC2Evernote” or ScanSnappedPHOTO2Evernote” i have used a separate folder for each of these actions. Got it working beautifully yesterday but alas! lo & beholdGRRRRR it has stopped working again today on all three. Why *&%$#@ed if i know. i think i will just go back to the standard issue and remember to delete the evernote saving duplicates folder occasionally. Any idea what’s going on here???? Sorry my ignorance and ability to know just enough to get myself in trouble seems to follow (haunt) me whenever i have a brilliant idea. I have also tried a recipe on IFTTT but couldn’t get that to work either!

    • Justin Lancy December 6, 2013 at 8:54 pm #

      Hi Al,

      We’ve all been where you are right now.

      Can’t really tell what part of your customization is causing the script to go off the rails. It’s certainly weird that it worked, but then didn’t.

      The only advice I can really give you is, if you want to learn how to customize scripts, keep tinkering! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve figured my way past a problem by trying small changes until something shifted in the results: Even getting a different error message from a small change can help you understand “what the code wants”.

      That said – It could also be a Mavericks issue. It seems that scripting isn’t working 100% for some people while, for others (like me), it’s just fine. Apple is expected to release 10.9.1 within a few days. Perhaps that will improve the AppleScript situation, though I’m sure most are hoping that they fixed Mail.app before doing anything else! 😉

      Good luck!

  28. Scott Windmiller December 13, 2013 at 11:01 pm #

    I have this setup and it works great but then all of the sudden stops. I have about 2000 pdfs I was importing and it stopped after 1290. I am very new to macs and don’t know where to check or how to start it up again.

  29. Rol December 17, 2013 at 12:56 am #

    I am using it on MB Pro with 10.9, and it works fine, except it still imports the .ds file into EN. Has anyone figured out how to stop that?

  30. Ed December 30, 2013 at 9:20 am #

    I was having an issue with this script, receiving the error message “Expected end of line, etc. but found application constant or consideration.”

    I found the following discussions:

    http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/36426-applescript-gone-bad/

    and

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/24170684#24170684

    changing the tell commands to tell application “com.evernote.evernote” caused a prompt to appear at the first compilation where I was asked to identify which program I wanted to associate…I selected “Evernote”. The script then worked without an issue.

    I’m not 100% sure of the mechanics of what went on, but the script is now working for me.

  31. sebastian January 5, 2014 at 8:51 am #

    This scrip rocks! That is all.

  32. RFB January 18, 2014 at 2:35 pm #

    This is a great idea! I’m a novice coder like a few other commenters, running Mavericks. I’m stuck at step 3. I couldn’t locate the Scripts folder. According to this article the Scripts folder has moved in 10.9. Would I create a new folder in my user’s library or would I try to put it in the Evernote scripts folder? Would this solve the issue that some other people were having?

  33. RFB January 18, 2014 at 9:57 pm #

    I went ahead and created the folder. It worked. I’ll let you know if that changes.

  34. Terrell February 13, 2014 at 12:06 pm #

    Hey dude, awesome script! Thank you so much this is a huge help for me

  35. Yol April 3, 2014 at 2:51 pm #

    Hi, is there any workaround for Mavericks? I couldn’t locate the scripts folder as others reported too, and when I created like RFB it didn’t show up in the service menu.

    It doesn’t work when I put it in the root library not in the user library. Any hints?

    • Yol April 3, 2014 at 3:18 pm #

      I managed to do it, here is how:

      1. Put the script in the root library folder, instead of the user library folder
      2. Go to Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Files and Folders > tick Folder Action Setup…

      Now it should show up in the services menu, and you can move on from step 3. in the original guide.

      • Yol April 3, 2014 at 3:20 pm #

        Changing the folder icon with Command+I doesn’t work though, it shows Preview’s default blank .png icon

        • Yol April 3, 2014 at 3:28 pm #

          Sorry, I just dragged the icon, didn’t follow the instructions properly.

  36. Shanna April 29, 2014 at 1:45 pm #

    Hi, thank you for providing this script and the clear instructions.
    I am a total newbie to Apple Script and have been looking for a solution like this. I have a lot of school files, PDF articles, and I would like to put them into a particular folder that can detect whenever I add files and upload them automatically to Evernote (creating separate ENs which then become searchable).
    I entered some of your script and did not get any error messages but I am not having any success using this with OS X Mavericks.

    I noticed that my Library/Script folder is totally empty.
    The services I create are being saved as .workflow files in the Library/Services folder (I was able to successfully execute a simple Send to Evernote script for the contextual ‘right click’ menu, and I notice that this file is also saved as a .workflow file in Library/Services folder).

    I customized and copied your script to the Library/Workflow/Applications/Folder Actions folder and it then shows up in my Folder Actions Setup script options, but still as a .workflow file (amidst the .scpt files already provided).
    I’m wondering if this may have something to do with why the script does not execute…How can I get it to save as .scpt file?

    I would really appreciate any pointers or advice. Thanks!

    • Justin Lancy April 30, 2014 at 11:37 am #

      Hi Shanna – Are you not seeing any “Folder Action Scripts” subfolder inside of the Scripts folder? If not, create one and place the SCPT file inside of it.

      • Shanna April 30, 2014 at 7:02 pm #

        Thank you for a quick reply.
        No there’s nothing in the Scripts folder (and no hidden files). I could create the folder like you said but I have another issue, in that, the files are saving automatically as .workflow filetypes. When I try to manually save as .scpt files I get the following error message:
        You cannot save this document with extension “.scpt” at the end of the name. The required extension is “.workflow”.

        I’m wondering if OS X Mavericks is just different?? I have never used Apple Script before so I’ve never gone into these folders or tweaked anything.

        • Justin Lancy May 2, 2014 at 6:33 am #

          Shanna,

          There’s no need to open and re-save the script that is enclosed in the ZIP file: Just extract the contents of the ZIP and then drag-and drop the SCPT file into the correct folder.

          • Shanna May 6, 2014 at 1:15 pm #

            Hey, that was brilliant and easy.
            I still can’t get my own script to save as .scpt files but thanks to your script and the simple drag and drop (I was trying to copy and paste into new Script file before) I have 170 school files uploading as I type.
            I only followed your instructions to remove the tagging, folder selection, and auto delete options to make it even more convenient for my purposes.

            Thank you very much!

  37. Shanna May 6, 2014 at 9:20 pm #

    Back with another Q:
    Is this script supposed to import a specific number of files only or should it be unlimited? Just wondering because I haven’t been able to import more than 20 files all afternoon. They aren’t too big, just PDFs mostly.
    Thanks,
    S.

    • Justin Lancy May 18, 2014 at 10:51 am #

      The script itself has no limit so, unless you’re getting an error message or the process seems to freeze up, I doubt that’s the issue. FWIW – Evernote Free Accounts have monthly limits, which may explain what you’re seeing.

  38. komrad May 15, 2014 at 12:32 am #

    Thank you for writing this. The script worked first time and I’m impressed with how smoothly the import process went. I have a few years worth of pdf’s to import and process. This will make the import process a breeze!