Help with Apple Shortcuts

[faaslave]

I am trying to make a shortcut that will find and replace 2 different things in a notes file.
Here is the issue. Everytime I download a song file that I am going to use, I have to change the format to make it work.
The header sin the file look like this [Verse1] [Chorus] etc
I need them to look like this Verse1: Chorus:
So I do a find and replace to remove the left bracket, then I do another one to remove the right bracket and add a colon, followed by a return

It would be m uch easier to have a shortcut I can run to do this, but I can't get the format right.

Any help is appreciated.

Dave

 

[0128672]

I am trying to make a shortcut that will find and replace 2 different things in a notes file.
Here is the issue. Everytime I download a song file that I am going to use, I have to change the format to make it work.
The header sin the file look like this [Verse1] [Chorus] etc
I need them to look like this Verse1: Chorus:
So I do a find and replace to remove the left bracket, then I do another one to remove the right bracket and add a colon, followed by a return

It would be m uch easier to have a shortcut I can run to do this, but I can't get the format right.

Any help is appreciated.

Dave

Could you paste screenshots of the shortcut as it is now so we can troubleshoot the issue?

 

[faaslave]

Could you paste screenshots of the shortcut as it is now so we can troubleshoot the issue?

I really have no idea how to set it up. All I have is this

 

[bogdanw]

Everytime I download a song file that I am going to use,

Wouldn’t it be easier to open the downloaded song file in TextEdit, search [Verse1] [Chorus] and replace with Verse1: Chorus: ?
Find and replace text in TextEdit on Mac https://support.apple.com/guide/textedit/find-and-replace-text-txtef6cfde1a/mac

 

[faaslave]

There are a lot of things to convert, verse1, 2, 3, interlude, intro, outro, and people use different naming conventions sometime. What I need is all the brackets removed and a colon inserted at the end of each one. plus a carriage return after it as well. I am sure that apple shortcuts can do this easy if i knew the correct syntax to set it up

 

[bogdanw]

Searching for something ([ or ]) and replacing with nothing, removes that something

 

[0128672]

You could experiment with Settings > Keyboard > Text > Replace/With entries.

Then in many Mac apps, including Notes, go to Edit > Substitutions > [make sure Text Replacement is checked] > Show Substitutions. Inside that box also make sure Text Replacement is checked, and then select Replace All. The Text Preferences button there will take you to the Keyboard > Text list you created.

I tried it but there are a couple of things it won't do such as adding a return at the end of a line, and creating a Replace/With pair where the With is blank. I would think might work for most of your entries, and then you could tweak it with a couple of individual replaces for returns.

I looked at Shortcuts option for multiple replace criteria but didn't find anything that would work. I could almost swear there was an option to do batch find and replace in Word, at least at one time but I don't know if that's still true.

And maybe there's an app or two that can handle multiple find and replace functions.

Replace text and punctuation in documents on Mac

In apps on your Mac, automatically replace text, quotation marks, hyphens, and internet addresses in documents.

support.apple.com

 

[0128672]

Also looks like there's an option in an Open Office extension. Open Office as you may know is free and open source. If you're open to different text document apps to perform these replacements, you will have more options than Notes offers.

Download Apache OpenOffice

Join the OpenOffice revolution, the free office productivity suite with over 375 million trusted downloads.

www.openoffice.org

Search and Replace for Open Office documents | Apache OpenOffice Extensions

extensions.openoffice.org

 

[faaslave]

Thanks for the reply. What I am trying to learn is how to do this with Apple shortcuts. I can do it with find and replace, but I really want to learn how to pull this off using apple shortcuts

 

[0128672]

Thanks for the reply. What I am trying to learn is how to do this with Apple shortcuts. I can do it with find and replace, but I really want to learn how to pull this off using apple shortcuts

I think to do that you might need to learn some Applescript. There's a sample in this Apple community discussion:

Shortcuts and Pages - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[faaslave]

I think it is possible using just the shortcut app. They have find and replaxce text commands built in. I am not using pages. All the files are in Notes. I thought the whole point of apple shortcuts was that you could build automation without scripting

 

[Jessica Lares]

Turn on Regular Expression under Show More.

Replace \[(.+?)\] with $1:

You need to manually add the newline in there because the expression for that doesn't work for whatever reason.

 

[NoBoMac]

^^This.

I looked at Shortcuts option for multiple replace criteria but didn't find anything that would work.

Maybe not I'm not understanding correctly, but you could just put multiple Replace Text actions together?

 

[0128672]

^^This.



Maybe not I'm not understanding correctly, but you could just put multiple Replace Text actions together?

Yes, you can do that, but I couldn't get it to work for even a single instance for a Notes document.

 

[NoBoMac]

Odd. Was able to do it for a note.

 

[0128672]

Odd. Was able to do it for a note.

Oh nice! Would you mind sharing a screenshot of the shortcut?

 

[NoBoMac]

Same as #13, just changed Text object to "Find Notes" action: Find All Notes with Title "XYZ".

Now, that I knew would return one note. For multiples, will need the Repeat with Each to do them one at a time.

 

[NoBoMac]

Something that just popped into my head about this: unfortunately, there is no way to truly edit a Note. Can append to a Note, but no way to change the text in one, need to create a new Note using the changed text.

• Get Note
• Set Variable to Note Name
• Pass Note text to Replace Text action(s)
• Set Variable to new text
• Delete old Note
• Create new Note with saved Name, new text

 

[Jessica Lares]

It's too risky when you don't have versioning.

 

[faaslave]

Thanks for the help. I gave up. I have to do 10 of them tonight again.
It doesnt have to be in notes, I could use pages instead if a shortcut would work.
I copy the song sheet into notes, but lets say pages instead. It looks like the attachment.

Everywhere you see [Chorus] [Verse] etc. I need to change them to Chorus: Verse: before I import them into my software i use on stage for my song sheets. The hope was that I could open the sheet like the one I uploaded, run a shortcut and it would do what I do manually for me.

What I do is is two find and replace commands
Find [ and I replace it with nothing - that removes the left brackets
Then I find ] and replace it with :
That's it. I know how to put those commands in the shortcut app, I think. Just like NoBoMac explained, but I don't know the other steps needed to make it work.

I have given up hope at this point. Thanks for the help though.

 

[bogdanw]

With ApplesScript in Pages

tell application "Pages"
    activate
    tell the front document
        tell body text
            delete (every character where it is "[")
            set every character where it is "]" to ":"
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

 

[faaslave]

Thank you. Just use applescript instead of shortcut. Got it. Thanks

 

[bogdanw]

ApplesScript can be used as it is in ScriptEditor, saved as an app, integrated into a QuickAction with Automator or into a Shortcut.
If you can provide more information about the format of the files you are downloading and the format required by the software you import them into, maybe we can provide suggestions for a more efficient workflow.