Steve Dotto here.
I’m glad you could join me today.
This demo is only for Mac users to all Windows users, unfortunately, move along.
Nothing to see here.
Unfortunately, this is product that I’m going to show you, Hazel, which is an amazing
product, is only a Mac product and search as I have, I’ve not been able to find its
equivalent in Windows.
Actually, any Windows users watch the demo for a little bit.
If there is a product in Windows, email me and let me know what does what we’re doing
here because this is a little bit of magic.
That’s what it is actually.
Hazel is an automatic organization system.
What it does is it basically allows us to create macros on our computer that perform
common housekeeping functions.
It’s kind of like the automatic clean up that happens in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
where we create these rules that then get enacted whenever it’s appropriate, whenever
we need something cleaned up or tidied up on our computer.
They’re all about process so if you find yourself doing the same thing over and over
again on a repeating basis, that is an opportunity for Hazel to work for you.
It’s a product that you kind of have to work to get your head around a little bit
so I’m going to show you one example of how it works, how the authoring system works,
how we create results and then it’s going to be up to you to figure out how it fits
in your world because really it’s got tremendous potential, tremendous capability.
Hazel costs $28 for a single seat license.
You can download it and try it for free for 14 days, which is great because you are going
to want to play with it a little bit.
But to be fair, I think it’s a product that over the months and years that you grow to
appreciate it and it’s where you notice that you do the same tasks over and over again
whenever you create a file or whenever you import a document.
In that, it allows you to create an automatic process for that.
In a lot of ways, it’s kind of similar to if-this-then-that which we’ve looked at
in a previous video but instead of working for the web it works for our computer.
Now we access Hazel either through our Control Panel—it installs in the System Preferences
and here I’ve also got it installed here in my Taskbar.
You can turn it on and off.
You can have it run or have it not run.
Let’s bring it up and see if we can show you a little bit of how it works.
I’ve created just a little bit of a demo structure for you to see what’s going on.
Now what Hazel does is it allows us to create a set of rules, as I said.
So how I thought I would position it for you today is let’s say that we are working as
a paperless office metaphor.
We’re kind of working our way towards a paperless office and we scan in document after
document as PDFs.
We want those documents to be stored in different file folders but you’re bulk processing.
You’re putting in lots of different folders or there are lots of different scans that
you’re putting in so you want Hazel to automatically sort them based on the name of the file.
Now it’s a fairly simple and straightforward thing but it’s also something we can illustrate
and we can see happen.
That’s why I’m going to use this as a demo.
What we do, first of all, is you have to choose within Hazel where each of your rules is applied,
whether it’s applied to the entire hard drive, whether it’s applied to a specific
folder or processing folder so you have control.
That’s important because if you have say a file that you don’t want filed away and
you want to keep it say on the Desktop, you then don’t have the rule applied to the
Desktop.
You only have it applied to a processing folder.
Does that make sense?
It will make a little bit more sense as we go along
First of all, I’m going to create a location.
I’m going to create a folder and I’ve got this demo folder on my Desktop, this Paperless
Office folder that I created.
I’m going to say that is the folder that I want these rules to be applied to.
This could be your Import folder when you’re scanning or this could be your Download folder
as you’re downloading documents from the web.
This could be any location on your computer or on your network.
Capisce?
Let’s move along.
Now let’s make a rule for the Paperless Office.
All I’m going to want to do is I’m going to want to move all these files that are important
info into my target folder for the demo, which is right over here.
Now I don’t want to grab them and drag them.
I’m going to want them to do that automatically as they’re being named or as they’re being
processed.
If I’m scanning in lots of different documents, I’m going to give different names to different
things and I want them distributed to the proper folder as they come in.
So I create a rule and this is the heart of Hazel right here, this set of rules.
I’m going to just call this the Demo rule right now because it’s the rule of demo.
We just walk our way through creating the script.
If all, any or none of these conditions are met, if all of these conditions are met—in
this case here it’s going to be a document with a name.
Look, I can say the type of document, the date it was created, the kind of document
so if you want to keep all of your PSD files, all of your Photoshop files in one place—you
know they tend to kind of get wherever you saved them as you’re working on them.
If you want all your PSD files moved to one location, that’s how you’d set it up right
here.
As you see, we can choose almost any criteria on our computer.
What I’m going to choose is if the name the document contains ImportantInfo because
that’s how I’m naming each one.
Now to be fair, as I’m importing documents, as I’m scanning them in, I would probably
be using a tool like TextExpander for automatically naming documents as well as I’d be really
extending this productivity technique through more than just this single app.
That’s just something to kind of think about, to noodle about as we look at Noodlesoft’s
software.
So we’ve got a simple rule, if the name contains important info.
I can add more rules.
I can add another rule.
If the type is PDF, I could choose that.
If the kind if PDF, which these are.
Actually, that’s a great idea.
It would be great if I had a Word document in there to show that I’d only sorted those
proper ones but I’m pretty sure it would work.
Then do the following: Move it—which is common, Rename it, Sync it, Add a color label.
Let’s set a color label.
Let’s label it and let’s put it to blue, and let’s move it to another folder.
I’m going to navigate my way through to the folder and I’m going to move it into
the target folder for demo.
Open that.
Okay, now if I’ve done everything right, I’ve just set up a script that when Hazel
monitors the system, it will automatically do these things.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to move this out of here onto my Desktop.
I’ve just moved it here onto the Desktop for now so that we can see if it does it when
we drop it back in.
Let me open up Hazel again.
We’ve got these rules in place.
All of our rules are in place and we’ve moved one of our documents out.
Are you ready for the grand experiment as Steve takes his chances?
I’m going to say OK and now there they go.
Isn’t that amazing?
Did you see that?
And I got a little notification that all of the files moved.
Now here’s the test.
I’ve got this other file that I took out and I’m going to move in.
I’m going to drop it in and let’s see if it just suddenly disappears and gets moved
in as Hazel does her thing.
It did it!
Let’s check and see if they’re all in here.
They are all in here and look, they’re all coded blue.
Hazel is a tool, as I mentioned earlier—and I hate being repetitive—but you’ve got
to start imagining where it can work for you.
If you’re a photographer importing photos and perhaps you want to automatically import
them into one album in one place but also put them into iPhoto, you can use Hazel to
do all those sorts of things.
For downloads, as you bring things into your Download folder, you’ll notice how whenever
you download something you have to go into your Download folder, grab it, and then throw
it out later.
You can tell Hazel when something comes into my Download folder, move it to my Desktop
right away.
That way, things can still all flow into your Download folder but then you can move into
your Desktop right away.
It might not be the best example but it gets you thinking about how you can use Hazel.
I hope you found this little video helpful.
Again, if any Windows users stuck with us through this whole demo and there’s a product
like Hazel in Windows, tell me about it.
Drop me an email.
For the rest of you, if you have an interesting product that you’d like to see us demo,
come to our website at DottoTech.com, drop me an email, and let me know what products
you’d like to see.
I’m all about productivity here at DottoTech and we produce one of these videos each week.
Thanks for spending time with me today.
I’m Steve Dotto.
[END OF VIDEO Noodlesoft Hazel a Demo of an Amazing Tool 9:29]