As I’ve mentioned before we use Apple Notes a lot in our class. If the class are writing, unless there is a need for formatting or layout, I often ask the pupils just to stick to notes.
Notes are easily AirDropped to me when I need to collect work and both pupils and myself can organise them in a fairly simple manner.
Occasionally I want to print the pupils work. Notes, reasonably enough, only lets you to print one note at a time. I wondered if there was AppleScript that would help. I found Export Apple Notes via AppleScript which exported a folder of notes to a new TextEdit document. I altered it to:
- Allow you to choose a folder from Notes.
- Export to an html file on disk.
- Provided page breaks so that the notes would each print on their own page.
Not particularly pretty, I guess I could work on the styles a little.
You need to be in my lucky position of having a mac in your classroom. Mine uses the same account as my iPad which helps me organise thing a lot.
Here is the code, I suspect it could be improved. Even if you don’t use AppleScript is easy enough to run. Open the AppleScript editor, create a new script, paste the code below in and hit run. You will be asked to choose a folder and then name an html file. The file will be created and opened with your default browser.
You then can print.
| set htmltop to "<!doctype html> | |
| <html lang=\"en\"> | |
| <head> | |
| <meta charset=\"utf-8\"> | |
| <title>Notes Export</title> | |
| <style> | |
| @media print { | |
| hr { | |
| page-break-after: always; | |
| } | |
| } | |
| </style> | |
| </head> | |
| <body>" | |
| set htmlbottom to "</body> | |
| </html>" | |
| tell application "Notes" | |
| activate | |
| set x to (name of every folder whose name is not "Notes") | |
| set foldertoexport to (choose from list x) as string | |
| if folder foldertoexport exists then | |
| set output to "" | |
| repeat with aNote in notes in folder foldertoexport | |
| set noteText to "<!-- ### Start Note ### --> | |
| " | |
| set noteText to noteText & ("<h1>" & name of aNote as string) & "</h1> | |
| " | |
| -- set noteText to noteText & ("<p>Creation Date: " & creation date of aNote as string) & "</p>" | |
| -- set noteText to noteText & ("<p>Modification Date: " & modification date of aNote as string) & "</p>" | |
| set noteText to (noteText & body of aNote as string) & "<hr> | |
| " | |
| set output to output & noteText | |
| end repeat | |
| set thehtml to htmltop & output & htmlbottom | |
| set theNewFile to choose file name default name foldertoexport & "-notes.html" | |
| set myFile to open for access theNewFile with write permission | |
| write thehtml to myFile as «class utf8» | |
| close access myFile | |
| else | |
| display dialog "not likly to happen" | |
| end if | |
| end tell | |
| tell application "Finder" to open theNewFile | |
Much appreciated. Worked nicely.
Don’t have any clue why Apple would exclude this function from the app natively.