AppleWorks spreadsheet selection

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
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#1

Good Morning:

Has anyone had any luck with accessing and/or retrieving data from user-selected cells in an AW spreadsheet? I looked in the Applescript Usage Notes that come with AW, and this is the code they recommended:

tell application "AppleWorks 6"
	tell front document
		get properties of selection --This is straight from the AW usage notes file and crashes every time in the SS, regardless of how many cells are selected.  Rats.
	end tell
end tell
--It does return some interesting stuff when using the WP, however.

As you can see from comments, it works great on selected text in the WP, but crashes AppleWorks every time I try to use it in the SS. I have NOT tried putting this inside of a try block yet; I am assuming that I have some kind of syntax issue. I have tried things like setting the selection to a variable, setting the contents of selected cells to variables, etc.

My eventual goal is to create a script that takes the cells a user selects and accesses the data in those cells for processing. I have most of that script finished and am currently using the clipboard by simply copying the selected cells and then accessing the data from there. If I could skip that step, however, it would be most excellent.

Craig Smith

Model: Powermac dual G4
AppleScript: 1.9.3
Browser: Firefox 1.0
Operating System: Mac OS X (10.3.9)

#2

This should give you a reference to a range of cells.

tell application “AppleWorks 6”
activate
set s to object specifier of selection
end tell

This will give you a list of values of selected cells.

tell application “AppleWorks 6”
activate
set v to selection
end tell

You probably did that already. Many apps in OSX treat ‘selection’ as a list and you can’t get properties of lists.

gl,

#3

kel:

Thanks a lot. Of course, it works just fine now. I was stuck on the whole [tell front document] thing, and never thought to try just set the varible to the selection and go home! I am constantly amazed at how many simple solutions exist, once somebody offers a gentle reminder to think outside the nested tell.

Craig

#4

Hi casdvm,

Glad you got it working.

AppleWorks is not that simple. Many workarounds are needed if you want to do more complicated things. ‘object specifier’ realy helps things out.

gl,

#5

kel:

You are absolultely correct about AppleWorks being a scripting challenge. I have done pretty well so far just using the scripting documentation included, although even that was not easy to locate. I am really having fun with that [object specifier] command you passed along; where did you get that? My two primary references are the Beginning Applescript by Steve Kochan and the Applescript text by Haanan Rosenthal. Is there another resource out there I should get my hands on?

Craig Smith

#6

Hi casdvm,

The AppleWorks dictionary shows certain objects that have the ‘object specifier’ property. Many objects inherit this property from other objects such as ‘graphic object’, ‘cell’, etc.

gl,