Using AppleScript to batch convert .pages to pdf

Question

I am needing to convert about 100 .pages documents to either pdf or docx. With the AppleScript script below, I am able to open .pages documents from the folder that I select. However I receive the following error when trying to export.

Question: What is causing the error and how do I fix it?

Error Message with personal information replaced:

error "Pages got an error: Can’t make alias \"Macintosh HD:Users:Path:To:File:foo.pages\" into type document." number -1700 from alias "Macintosh HD:Users:Path:To:File:foo.pages." to document

Line of code producing the error:

export this_file to exportFileName as PDF

Script:

set exportFileExtension to "pdf"
set this_folder to (choose folder with prompt "Pick the folder containing the files to process:") as string
tell application "System Events"
    set these_files to every file of folder this_folder
end tell
repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_files
    set this_file to (item i of these_files as alias)
    set this_info to info for this_file
    tell application "Finder"
        set {fType, nExt} to ({file type, name extension} of file this_file)
        set documentName to the name of this_file
        set exportFileName to documentName & "." & exportFileExtension
    end tell
    if nExt contains "pages" then
        tell application "Pages"
            open this_file
            export this_file to exportFileName as PDF
            close saving no
        end tell
    end if
end repeat

###Update###: I have added this script to github with the hopes of it benefiting others as it continues to be improved. Contributions appreciated.

Answer 1

Replace the line of code producing the error with the following:

export front document to file (this_folder & exportFileName) as PDF

There were two issues here:

• export takes a document, so you need to pass it the document as opened by Pages.
• You gave the file name, but not a containing folder to put the file with this name, so concatenate this with the containing folder path so Pages knows where to export to.