Mac Automation: automating Microsoft Word 2008

When Microsoft released Office 2008 for Mac, they did something that I must applaud -- they joined the ranks of Mac developers creating Automator-able applications. When you do a search in Automator for "Microsoft," it will reveal all of the Automator actions that ship with Microsoft Office 2008. There is lots of great stuff included, so we'll be covering some of it in this four part Mac Automation series. I will take you through how to automate each of the Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage.

First off, let's take a look at what you can automate in Word 2008. Doing a search for "Word" in Automator will display the available actions for Microsoft Word. As you can see, there are plenty of actions that you can automate. For this how-to, we'll focus on a workflow that does the following:

Creates a new document
Sets document properties
Gathers text from the clipboard
Places a watermark in the document
Saves the document
Prints the document

Continue reading to learn how to create this workflow.
For this workflow, you'll need the following Automator actions (in the same order):

Create New Word Document
Set Word Document Properties
Paste Clipboard Contents Into Word Documents
Add Watermark to Word Documents
Save Word Documents
Print Word Documents

You can then place in the appropriate text for "Set Word Document Properties," "Add Watermark to Word Documents," and "Save Word Documents." When you're done, your workflow should look something like this:

Running the workflow
First off you need something that has already been typed. The great thing about this workflow is that it allows you to copy text from any application; be it Pages, TextEdit, or your web browser. I have typed 4 simple paragraphs in TextEdit and will copy all of them by pressing Command + C on my keyboard. The text has been copied and now you can run the workflow. Just press the run button in the top right corner of Automator.

The workflow springs to life opening Microsoft Word, creating a new document, setting the page properties, pasting the text you previously copied, saving the Word document, and finally, printing it. When the workflow completes, you will see a Word document similar to the one below. A copy will also be printed on the default printer.

You can then save your Automator workflow to your desired format. You have to commend Microsoft for making Office 2008 so seamlessly integrated into Mac OS X Leopard. I will show you how to automate more areas of Microsoft Office in the near future.

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When Microsoft released Office 2008 for Mac, they did something that I must applaud -- they joined the ranks of Mac developers creating...

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Kathleen Fedouloff

What a nightmare! I thought I must be doing something wrong with Automator, but the support pages are singularly unsupportive. Now I see that my software is kneecapped. I think I'll have to go back to Quickeys...

Oh, and I am just one of those users who DID make use of macros, and now can't!

April 29 2008 at 10:53 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ken Cohen

â€œLeave it to Micro$oft to make a feature that is specifically for home users (Automator) not work with the "Home" version of Office.â€œ

I believe they added Automator (and supposedly enhanced Applescript support) to replace VBA, which has been removed. Not much of a solution, but better than nothing.

I also donâ€œt see anything wrong with the fact that the â€œhomeâ€œ version, with its low price, should lack some features of the commercial version. I doubt that many non-commercial users made much use of macros and VBA in Office 2004.

March 11 2008 at 3:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Unregistered

I'm using Leopard and Microsoft Office 2008, and I can see the office 2008 automator actions just fine.

March 10 2008 at 9:08 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

John Mc

You must still be running Tiger. When I fire up automator there are no Microsoft options. So I did a search for "automator" on MS Word Help and this is what it has to say for Automator Workflows and Appliscripts:

"Running Automator workflows and AppleScripts from the Office script menu is not currently supported under Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard)."

Shame, as I'd like to try this out.

March 10 2008 at 8:15 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

3 replies to John Mc's comment

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