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.
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| 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.