Stationary Pad File Not Duplicated When Opened

Questions & Suggestions
1

I have an RTF file that is marked as a Stationary Pad file (by using the Finder to invoke Get Info on the file and enabling the appropriate check box). For those who don’t know, a Stationary Pad file is like a Word template. Point being, when the file is double clicked in the Finder, a duplicate is immediately created and the duplicate is what gets opened while the original remains unchanged.

So this RTF I have opens in TextEdit. However, when I use KM to open the file with a macro—using the Open A File, Folder Or Application action—a duplicate isn’t created and opened, and instead the original is. I’ve worked around this by having KM open TextEdit, invoking the Open dialog, then using the Go To Folder command to get to the file and open it. Slower, sure, but not by much and not something I’m actually concerned about fixing.

But I am curious why the standard action for Open A File, Folder Or Application can’t handle the Stationary Pad file correctly. Perhaps related, neither can using something like

open -e “path/to/file”

either as a shell script activated through KM or directly in Terminal.

Any thoughts?

2

Hey NaOH,

Clearly Keyboard Maestro is not using the Finder to open the file.

The stationary bit is of the Finder and ONLY of the Finder.

To properly work with stationary use AppleScript.

-Chris

------------------------------------------------------------------
set myRtfFile to alias ((path to downloads folder as text) & "Read Me.rtf")

# Opens the original file.
tell application "TextEdit"
  activate
  open myRtfFile
end tell

# Opens a copy of the original file.
tell application "Finder"
  activate
  open myRtfFile
end tell
------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Like
3

Thanks, ccstone. Once you phrase it like that, it becomes clear how I didn’t think the situation through properly, that the Stationary Pad attribute is part of the Finder and not the file itself.