10.4: FileVault breaks some Automator Actions

Oct 24, '05 05:26:00AM

Contributed by: piper

Tiger only hintI recently solved a problem I have been having with Automator for a while. When I run certain Automator actions (for example, when trying to rename Finder items) I get the following error:

AppleScript Error: Finder got an error: Can't get properties of alias "user:path:to:file". (error -1728)

It turns out that if you have FileVault enabled, many Automator actions break when you run them. My hunch is that this bug has to do with the way the system handles paths to your home directory when it is mounted through FileVault.

The solution is to either disable FileVault, or to simply copy the file(s) out of your home directory before running the Automator action on them, and then copy them back when you are done. What I don't understand is why the same Automator action worked when I created it months ago, but stopped working somewhere along the way.

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