Friday Favorite: Using AppleScript to work with tasks in Things 2
A few weeks ago I purchased Things 2 when it was on sale in the Mac App Store. I've used the demo before and have always enjoyed the simplicity of the Things interface and the power of its tagging system.
One difficulty that I faced with Things is its closed environment, which keeps all your tasks inside the app. That's great if you work only with Things, but not so convenient if you want to share your tasks with other apps or other people. You can drag and drop your tasks individually to other apps like OS X Calendar, but the easiest way to export your tasks is to use AppleScript and transfer them in bulk.
One script I regularly use is this export Things to text script from Dexter Ang (thepoch) on github. This script exports the Things database to the desktop as Things Backup.txt. You can tweak the script to export certain parts of the Things database like your Today tasks or Next tasks. This is very handy as you can then edit the text file and upload it to Google Docs or any other app that'll import and format a text document.
Another one of my favorite scripts is this Reminder export script from NightLion.net. This script lets you export all the tasks in your Today list and import them into the OS X Reminders app. I've been using this script each morning to pull my tasks down into Reminders, which I then use to set flexible notifications for the tasks.
The last script that I've adopted is this Mail To Things script posted by marekz on the Cultured Code forums. This script lets you select a message in your OS X Mail inbox and send it quickly to Things. The task will appear in your Things Inbox with the subject as the name of the task and a link to the email in the notes.
These are just a few scripts that I have found during my initial weeks with Things. If you have any favorite scripts, please share them in the comments. If you want to create your own scripts, you should check out Cultured Code's PDF guide to using AppleScript with Things as well as our growing list of AppleScripts for OS X.
