On-line and off-line help: Automatically download file and print each day. - Help.com

anythingwhatever
offline Verified (3 years, 1 month) Visit anythingwhatever's shoutbox
Edinburgh, U8, GB

Automatically download file and print each day.

For work, I have to review a PDF document published online each day. I usually print it out and read it on the train.

Is there a program (ideally on Windows) that would fetch the file(s) at a set time and send them to my printer to the document is read for me to review when I wake? Without my intervention…

This open post was written 1 year, 3 months ago | V/U/S: 424, 10, 3 | Edit Post | Leave a reply | Report Post


Reciprocity (0) Reciprocation Failure -- The poster has NOT helped anyone else yet!

Since writing this post anythingwhatever may have helped people, but has not within the last 4 days. anythingwhatever is a verified member, has been around for 3 years, 1 month and has 116 posts and 918 replies to their name.

Post Tags (10)

Replies (10)

Where were you?

Click and drag to move the map around. FAQ: How we place people on this map »
You can also watch events on Help.com as they happen
Mouse over the map for 2 seconds to see an expanded, interactive view

fdjsafkdaj offline Unverified User #
An Unknown Location | 1 year, 3 months ago (3 minutes after post)

If you study up on your programming I’m sure you can make a “goto” file-> print script

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators
This account has been deactivated.
fdjsafkdaj offline Unverified User #
An Unknown Location | 1 year, 3 months ago (6 minutes after post)

Also it depends how complex the change in the pdf link is as well,
if it is the same link every day, it is probably quite simple.

For apple this guy:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.ph…

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators
This account has been deactivated.
anythingwhatever offline Verified User (3 years, 1 month) Long Term User Shouts: 1 #
Edinburgh, U8, GB | 1 year, 3 months ago (6 minutes after post)

I was thinking I could have done it with Automator on the Mac - but the printer I want to send it too will not work with the Mac and I don’t fancy buying a higher end laser printer just for this purpose. :-(

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators
anythingwhatever offline Verified User (3 years, 1 month) Long Term User Shouts: 1 #
Edinburgh, U8, GB | 1 year, 3 months ago (8 minutes after post)

fdjsafkdaj wrote:
Also it depends how complex the change in the pdf link is as well,if it is the same link every day, it is probably quite simple.

Same URL everyday…

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators
fdjsafkdaj offline Unverified User #
An Unknown Location | 1 year, 3 months ago (10 minutes after post)

Oh so you’re on mac?

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators
This account has been deactivated.
anythingwhatever offline Verified User (3 years, 1 month) Long Term User Shouts: 1 #
Edinburgh, U8, GB | 1 year, 3 months ago (13 minutes after post)

I’m on both Mac and PC (XP). Mostly Mac but the printer I want it to print on (the one I got from Work) is Windows only…

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators
fdjsafkdaj offline Unverified User #
An Unknown Location | 1 year, 3 months ago (13 minutes after post)

http://www.macosxhints.com/dlfiles/da…

– URL is in the form of {URL_BASE, “yyyymmdd.html”

set UrlBase to “http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-”
set DayString to day of (current date)
set MonthString to month of (current date) as number
set YearString to year of (current date)

–Add zero padding for days/months less than 10 (required URL format)
if (DayString 10) then set DayString to “0″ & DayString
if (MonthString 10) then set MonthString to “0″ & MonthString

– Set date portion of URL
set dateString to YearString & MonthString & DayString as string

– Set complete URL
set UrlAddr to UrlBase & dateString & “.html” as string

– Open the URL in Firefox
tell application “Firefox”
Get URL UrlAddr
end tell

– Activate Firefox
activate application “Firefox”

– Print out
PrintFireFox()

– Here was the tricky part. You have to tell ‘System Events’ to tell ‘Firefox’ to make a series of clicks.
– This is based on UI Scripting.
on PrintFireFox()
tell application “System Events”
tell process “Firefox”
delay 3
click menu item “Print…” of menu “File” of menu bar 1
delay 1
click pop up button 2 of window “Print”
delay 1
click menu item “my_print_preset” of menu 1 of pop up button 2 of window “Print”
delay 1
key down return
delay 1
key up return
end tell
end tell
end PrintFireFox

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators
This account has been deactivated.
fdjsafkdaj offline Unverified User #
An Unknown Location | 1 year, 3 months ago (15 minutes after post)

for windows… all I can say is learn the command line =/
http://commandwindows.com/

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators
This account has been deactivated.
anythingwhatever offline Verified User (3 years, 1 month) Long Term User Shouts: 1 #
Edinburgh, U8, GB | 1 year, 3 months ago (23 minutes after post)

Okay, thanks for your help. I think that’s just a little too technical for me…

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators
Fire offline Verified User (3 years, 7 months) Long Term User Shouts: 2 #
An Unknown Location | 1 year, 3 months ago (1 hour, 8 minutes after post)

you could just get the macrofox extension for firefox.

it can navigate to a pdf a print.

i dont know about setting it to do it at a certain time though, and you would need firefox to be open.

Quote this reply Report this reply to moderators

Invite Others to Help

A logged in and verified Help.com member has the ability to setup a Friends List and invite others to help with posts.