# The Action Manager

You create, remove, duplicate, rename, export, edit and run actions from the Action Manager. The Action Manager displays the list of actions and also displays the order the actions appear in the Actions>User defined menu. You can drag and drop in the list of actions to manually change the order. The entire Action Manager display can be sorted ascending and descending by clicking on the column headers. You can also sort a selected folder or the folder containing the selected action via the Sort Folder context menu items.

If you have a particular sort order that you would like to retain, you can save it by the Save Current Sort Order context menu item. You can return to the saved sort by the Sort by Saved Sort Order context menu item. Note that if you are synching preferences between two Macs by the Auto import/export preferences file option, the saved sort results might be less than desired. The saved sort order information is ignored when importing actions.

All of the functionality of the Action Manager is accessed via the context menu.

Actions can be placed into folders which makes it easier to manage a large number of actions. Folders are created via the New Folder context menu item.

If you have an action which is called by another and you do not want it to appear in the menus used to choose an action, you can click on the checkbox in the hidden column to hide the action. Note that the Hidden option only effects menus where you would choose an action to run. It does not effect menus used in the creation of action steps.

You can mark an action as automatically selecting all files by clicking on the appropriate checkbox in the table.

By default an action will only appear on the User Defined Actions menu. If you have written an action which extends the capabilities of the File to Tag, Rename or Search for Artwork functionality, you can specify that the action should also be placed into the associated menu. The following indicators are used in the table: F for File to Tag, R for Rename and S for Search for Artwork. You can add or remove an action for one of these menus via theAdd to Menu context menu item.

To edit an action, select a single action and choose the Open context menu item. You can also double click on an action to edit it.

You can display a popup window which contains an action's description by means of the Description... context menu item. An actions's description is the first non empty text in leading Force Grouped or Comment statements. Hitting the space bar has the same effect as selecting the menu item.

When you drag to the application icon or use the Finder's Open With command, the default action if there is one, will automatically be run. You select the default action by choosing an action in the table and by clicking on the Set as the Default Action menu item. The default action is identified by a ✓ icon. You can use the Preferences-Actions Only run the default action if Yate is not already open setting to limit when the dfault action is run.

The main window supports five toolbar buttons to run actions. The toolbar buttons are named Action 1, Action 2 ... Action 5. You associate an action with one of the toolbar buttons by choosing an action in the table and by clicking on the Set as Toolbar Action n menu item. An action associated with a toolbar button is identified by a 1, 2 ... 5 icon. The toolbar button will have a tooltip representing the name of the action. If toolbar button labels are displayed, by default the label will be Run action n. You can implicitly specify a portion of the action name is to be used as a button label by enclosing the desired text in square brackets. eg. Rename and [Move] files

Note that any given action can have at most one special association. It can be the default action or associated with one of the action toolbar items. The Clear Special Status context menu item will remove any of the associations without assigning them to another action. Note also that moving an item to the trash automatically removes any special associations.

You can assign an icon to actions and action folders in order to differentiate them for identification purposes. You assign the icons by means of the Set Action Icon and Set Folder Icon context menu items. These icons will not be displayed if the action already has a special association.

To create a new action choose the New Action context menu item. You are given the opportunity to edit the name. This method allows you to place a new action within a specific folder or in a specific location. New actions can also be created outside of the Action Manage by selecting the Actions>New Action menu item.

To remove actions and/or folders, select one or more items and choose the Move to Trash context menu item. Yate maintains a trash bin for all actions which are removed. The contents of the bin persists until the application terminates. You may move items in and out of the trash bin. If you reset the action list via Reset Preferences or Reset Built In Items, the entire previous set of actions will be available in the trash.

To duplicate an action, select an action and choose the Duplicate context menu item. The action will be duplicated and you are given the opportunity to edit the name.

To rename an action or folder simply edit the name inline. All references to the renamed action will be updated.

To export specific actions, select the actions you want to export and choose the Export context menu item. When exporting, if you select a file which already exists and enable the Merge option, the actions will be written to the existing file overwriting any actions which were there already. All non action items in the file will be retained. When exporting folders the operation performed depends on if the folder is expanded or collapsed. The following rules are applied:

The folder is collapsed
  The folder and all of its contained actions will be exported.
The folder is expanded
  The folder and only contained items which are selected will be exported.

When an action is selected for export and its containing folder is not, the action when imported will appear in the highest containing exported folder or outside of all folders if there was no exported containing folder.

When exporting, you can specify that a Smart Export be performed. The selection rules for folders is the same as described above. When doing a Smart Export, all referenced sub-actions and other Yate component types are automatically exported. You will be provided with the option of supplying a prefix to be added to every component's name. This is extremely useful if you are sending us the exported file to look at. When doing a Smart Export, folders are not preserved. As all referenced component types are exported, there is no option to merge the file contents.

To run an action, select a single action and choose the Run context menu item.