The Mac OS has a lot of neat things built in that we never see. One of those neat things is something called textutil which does quite a few things. In this case I only wanted it to do one thing: convert my .doc files to .rtf files.
Why? Because I don’t trust that .doc is an archival format. Some older versions of .doc are barely supported by Microsoft. What’s to say that my files will open in another ten years? Nothing as far as I can tell. I ‘m a writer so I need my files to last. When I paint, draw, or print photos I use acid free paper because I want those things to last. Using .doc files is like using acidic paper. I don’t use the format anymore but I did and had almost a thousand .doc files to convert. That was daunting.
Mac OS Hints shared a clever terminal command using find and textutil to batch convert files, I took that and built an applescript out of it so that my friends could use it easily. This applescript asks for a folder, gives the option to convert or convert & delete the original, and then converts every file in the folder. It will even convert files in subfolders. I might build it up at some point to use more of textutil, but for now I am offering this simple applescript.
4 Comments
Your script is exactly what i am looking or but the link seems to be broken. Could you please send me that doc2rtf applescript.
Thanks
Gary
whoops. I’ll fix the link now. Sorry about that.
—Jon Link
Hi Jon, this is exactly what I’m looking for, but when I try to run the script (I click on the “convert” button), I receive an error message after selecting a folder. It reads: find: Ata.doc: unkown experession primary (Ata.doc is the name of one of the files I’m trying to convert in the folder).
Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks!
PS - the same thing happens when I follow the Mac OS Hints directions using Terminal, so it’s not an issue with your script…but I’m still confused.