Intermittently (and several times yesterday), PDF’s have been imported into EF as RTFs. All the imports were attempted using Finder Service with Options. When I recognized the problems, I tried again, and the files uploaded correctly the second times. Was I accidentally doing something wrong on the first attempts?
What did the RTF files look like?
The only time EagleFiler converts file formats when importing is if you import an Apple Mail mailbox folder; it will convert it to mbox format.
EagleFiler will create a new RTF file if you give it something that’s not a file: text or a URL (if you’ve set the Web page format to RTF). Possibly if you had selected a bunch of PDF files and text within a Mail message they would all get embedded in an RTFD file. But I would expect files selected in the Finder to always be seen as files.
The RTFs contain only the title of the PDFs.
I’m enclosing two examples.
So they contain the text of the PDF within the RTF? Not the PDF file itself embedded as an attachment? I don’t see how this could happen using the service on selected files in the Finder, or did I misunderstand what you did?
It looks to me like the RTFs contain only the title of the PDFs.
I don’t see any attachments.
Why do you say they contain the text of the PDF?
This happened a lot a few days ago, but has occurred intermittently since I began using EF.
Previously it had been a one off sort of problem. I just assumed I was mistakenly doing something wrong.
Yes, I think you are right that the RTF files only contain the titles. It seems like for some reason macOS is only sending EagleFiler the text of the titles, rather than the files themselves. I will work on adding some debug logging so that we can see precisely what EagleFiler is receiving.
In the meantime, I wonder whether there is any commonality among the files that have this problem. Are they all stored in the cloud? Is it related to the view settings of the Finder window where you’re selecting them?
All the uploads were attempted from my Download folder on my Mac.
I used the same procedure for each attempt (successful or unsuccessful):
Highlight file, press space bar to show first page
Highlight file name
Scroll to Finder Services, then EF: Import with Options.
I use the displayed first page to copy title and author.
Why are you trying to highlight the filename? It sounds like you are telling EagleFiler to import the selected text from the Quick Look preview window. If you want it to import the file you should use the service when the regular Finder window is frontmost.
I highlight the title of the article (not the file name) so I can copy and paste into the EF record.
I just tried highlighting before and after I scroll to EF w/options.
Today the pdf was correctly uploaded both times.
The Finder window is not frontmost when I do that, but have discovered that after I open the preview, I have to re-click the file listing in the Finder for the service to be activated.
I need to keep the file image open so I can copy and paste both the article title and the author.
It “almost always” works fine and seems to be the easiest way to upload articles that I’ve downloaded.
Is there a convenient alternative?
I see, so you are trying to copy/paste metadata from the body of the PDF into EagleFiler’s Options window?
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You could import using the Capture With Options key rather than the service, since it always operates on files selected in Finder rather than on text.
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You could use a clipboard manager utility so that you can copy multiple separate items and then paste them, without having to go back and forth one-at-a-time.
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You could add the metadata after importing. For example, you can select text in EagleFiler’s PDF view and then use the Set Title and Set From commands in the contextual menu.