Saving OSX sessions

Hi,

I am currently doing research for my dissertation and am looking for a solution to the following problem: I work with a certain set of documents every time I sit down to focus on a certain part of my research, and I am juggling 3 or 4 projects of this sort at the moment. I am looking for a way to get OSX to open the same set of documents every time I sit down to work on one of those projects. Say, I have 4 or 5 PDF files, plus 3 or 4 browser windows/tabs, a Word document open for each project. As it stands, merely putting the computer to sleep is not an adequate solution. I believe what I need is the functional equivalent of having several hibernate images that I can call up at will. Project desktops, if you will. I am sure there is an Applescript-savvy person out there who can help me with this.

Many thanks.

Drop the documents all in your startup options, in the System Preferences under Accounts.

EDIT: At least I think that should work. I've never tried dropping actual documents there... just apps. I'm at work and won't have a chance to test this till late tonight.

Ok, the more I think about this, maybe adding stuff to load on startup wasn't quite what you are looking for.

One real simple thing to do is use Spaces to set up a virtual desktop. Put all your documents there and run all your projects while in that Space.

One other option is to use Automator to make an action that will automatically load documents of your choice. I believe you could even drop all your documents (or aliases to them) in a folder and have an Automator action set up to automatically open every thing in that folder when you run it.

Thank you. Does automator auto-open files in a saved-search folder as well? I could perhaps do the recently opened files thing.

abilerabisi said:

Thank you. Does automator auto-open files in a saved-search folder as well? I could perhaps do the recently opened files thing.

Click to expand...

You can have Automator open anything in a folder. Here's how to set up the workflow:

Open Automator and start a new workflow.

Under Files and Folders, add "Get Specified Finder Items" and add the folder(s) in which the aliases or project files are located that you want to run. Alternatively, you can use "Ask for Finder Items", which will not have pre-defined locations. Every time you run the workflow, it will ask you what folder to use.

Next, add "Get Folder Contents", and then "Open Finder Items". Hit the Run icon on the toolbar to test this out. If it works, then save the workflow. I recommend saving it as an application, not a workflow. If you save it as a workflow, Automator will open every time you run it. Saving as an app make this much smoother, so long it works exactly as intended.