I opened group “A”, and the window is displaying its contents, say a few groups, records.
I knew I had just taken a screenshot, or added something to the global inbox - and I wanted to move that into group “A”. But it could have been a record or group somewhere else.
Not knowing any better, today I just open a new window and navigate to Inbox, and drag it into “A”
But there has to be some other way of doing this - pulling rather than pushing.
If you would like to have an automation do that for you, you have to somehow provide the missing information, i.e. the name of the document? How precise does it have to be? Would you be using tags? etc.
fred, I was thinking of something like launching a (the?) sorter that allowed me to navigate, potentially search, and move the selected record into “A”. Maybe something like this already exists and I’m just missing it.
I wouldn’t want to have to specify the record name, or tags - just navigate to it knowing where it’s supposed to be.
Have you tried CTRL-CMD-M when viewing the record to be moved. It is the move popup and you can then type/search for the destination easily. I use it all the time.
Could the record you want to move be in a location other than the global inbox? Or are we only talking about the global inbox for this scenario? It’s not entirely clear to me.
Like @saltlane I also use the Move To popover all the time. Another tip is that you can tear off the Go To popover and use it as a drag & drop target for moving items.
troej, the record could be somewhere else. As I responded to saltlane, I want to pull a record, not push a record (via Move To). But I’ll try the popover.
[Edit] - the Go To… popover doesn’t let me see records, only groups
Yeah, I got what you meant with “pull” The Go To popover is “push” – I just mentioned it because saltlane brought up the Move To popover, which you can’t tear off in the same way. In case this situation arises from a lack of screen real estate.
I’m pondering how to approach it. Basically we want to get the most recently added item across all databases, then “pull” that? Will the time it was added always be fairly recent?
This Smart Group is always open in a specific Space on my Mac.
If I want to “Push” or “Pull” something I recently worked with, I go to that Smart group and right-click on the item. It lets me Move it to a Recent location, a Favorite location, or a location I search for.
The time added (of the record to be “pulled”) doesn’t really matter that much.
So here’s the scenario again:
I’m, say, doing some cleanup in my databases and groups, and looking inside a group “A” somewhere - and I know I had some records that I would like to bring here as well, maybe from the inbox, maybe from some other locations or even databases (that are open).
This happens to me very frequently - as I have a couple of dozen databases, with millions of records - for everything in my life… The databases have been carefully curated over the last 15 years, in terms of what they contain (e.g., “PHOTOGRAPHY”) - but I could have saved, years ago, receipts from cameras or lenses, in some other database.
Yeah, I could “push” - but “pulling” is more natural when I’m consolidating “A”
But the “Date Modified” criteria are not very relevant to me - what I want is to be able to launch some window or popup, and pick an open database, group, record, to BRING into the group I have been working in. None of the Go To, Move To seem to work like this for me, and they (I believe) don’t show individual records anyways…
That would make a scripting approach significantly more difficult. We need some way to define potential candidates. I already started testing some stuff in Script Editor, but I think I just discovered a much better solution
Well… Have you tried the Go > To Document popover? I guess it’s mainly meant for opening stuff, but you can also drag & drop items FROM it TO other windows That seems to be exactly what you’re asking for.
This is a bit of a long shot, but if I would do it, I would use Keyboard Meastro. You could consider the following.
Start the script, typically by assigning a shortcut to it
The script would register the currently opened group using AppleScript
Keyboard Meastro would issue the command “To Document” as found in the Go menu
This would open the ‘Open dialog” where you can select the document you want to move
Keyboard Meastro would be waiting until the moment that the “Open dialog” is no longer visible on the screen, i.e. until the moment you have opened the document OR until you bailed out using escape
The script would register the currently opened group using AppleScript
In the case you bailed out, the group from step 2 and 6 would be identical. if they are identical bail out.
If it is different register the name of the file that has been selected.
Keyboard Meastro would issue the AppleScript to select the group as registered in step 2
Finally it would issue the AppleScript command to move the file to the group in front, i.e. the group registered in step 2
Everywhere where I write AppleScript, you could also use JXA.
In what has to be a huge mind f*&t I never noticed the Go > To Document that both you and troej alluded to (in fact, Troej mentioned Go To - and I always only saw the top item, Go To > Group).
I will try and create the script you are mentioning to see how it performs!
Haha, even better … you can actually keep the popovers for the groups and documents open at the same time so you can drag items back and forth. A revelation. For a dummy like me
The Go To popover is “push” – I just mentioned it because saltlane brought up the Move To popover, which you can’t tear off in the same way. In case this situation arises from a lack of screen real estate.
