Tasks from excel list of files

[andrewiv]

Does anyone know of a way, through task scheduler or some other program, to use a list of files from excel and automate saving pdf's, step files, dxf's, etc..?  We have an excel file with 500+part numbers and want to generate files to send to outside companies for quoting purposes.  The part numbers are the file names so I think it should be possible, but I don't have any experience with a piece of software that can read the list and perform the tasks.

[arron.craig · Accepted solution]

All I can think off is a multi step and fairly messy process but it's certainly possible. 

I would use powershell to create a shortcut of each file, using your excel file as an input for the shortcut source (if the full file path is included). Have it save all shortcuts into a single folder. Since Task Scheduler allows you to Ctrl+A to select all files in a folder (including shortcuts) you can then just select them all at once. 

Making a script that does the above with a couple user inputs would be the better long term solution.

If it's a one off then you can skip the powershell script and use "Search Everything". With some excel magic and "find & replace" you can turn your list of 500+ file names into a search string. Select all search results>Ctrl+C and then paste the shortcuts into a new folder.

(note I am getting duplicate search results, I think its an issue with my folder indexing on my machine, you shouldn't have to worry about this)

You can then just select all the shortcuts in Task Schuduler when creating your task.

 

 

[andrewiv]

Thanks for the info, I will look into the search everything app.  Do you have any suggestions to get the files from vault?  I would need to make sure that the files are on my hard drive before performing the search, so I need a way of getting the files in the list out of Vault.

[arron.craig]

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@andrewiv wrote:

Do you have any suggestions to get the files from vault?  

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I would head over to the Vault forum as you are probably going to need to use the Vault API.

[andrewiv]

I found this topic that explains how to use the standard vault search and get all files from a list.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-forum/get-files-from-vault-based-on-list-of-file-names/td-p/841...