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How to Turn a Text File Into an AudioBook on a Mac

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The Macintosh Operating System has almost always had a built-in Text to Speech converter. One use of the Text to Speech feature is as a screen reader for those whose vision is impaired, but the speech program can also create audiobooks from any text file. You could convert a presentation to an audio file and listen to it on the way, in order to prepare for the speech. There are many public domain books out on the Internet, and if you have ebooks you'd rather listen to instead of read, converting those to audiobooks is a cinch. Using Automator, a powerful and simple scripting tool in the Mac OS, you'll be able to create a "plug-in" that will create an audio file in "aiff" format that you can play on an iPod or most other media players.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

Computer running Mac OSX
TextEdit document

How to Create the Text to AudioBook Plug-in

Step1

Launch Automator. You can find it in the Applications folder on Mac OS X.

Step2

Select "Text" as the starting point in the "Select a starting point to open a new workflow" window.

Step3

Select "TextEdit" from the "Get Content From" drop-down box.

Step4

Make sure "Use text of open TextEdit document" is selected in the second drop-down box.

Step5

Click the "Choose" button.

Step6

Select "Text" from the "Library" list on the far left.

Step7

Double-click "Text to Audio File." You can also click-drag "Text to Audio File" on to the workflow area.

Step8

Set the "System Voice" to "Alex" if you're using Mac OS X Leopard, and "Bruce" if you're using Mac OS X Tiger.

Step9

Type "Audiobook" into the "Save As" text area.

Step10

Select where you'd like the audiobook saved on your computer. By default it saves to the Desktop.

Step11

Click on "File" > "Save As Plug-In" (or use the keyboard shortcut Option-Command-S).

Step12

Type "AudioBook" in the "Save Plug-in As" text box. You can name this however you please, but make sure it's descriptive.

Step13

Select "Finder" in the "Plug-in for" drop-down.

Step14

Click "Save."

How to Make an AudioBook from a TextEdit Document

Step1

Navigate to your text file in the Finder. If you don't have a TextEdit document, copy and paste your text into the TextEdit program in Mac OSX (found in the Applications folder), save it and navigate to this file. Make sure this text file is open as well.

Step2

Right-click or command-click the text file in the Finder. Select "More" > "Automator" > "AudioBook".

Step3

Go to your Desktop and find the file named "AudioBook.aiff."

Step4

Double-click on "AudioBook.aiff" and it should begin playing in iTunes.

Tips & Warnings

This works best with TextEdit files. Make sure that the file you want to convert to audio is open at the time you're performing the conversion.
If the TextEdit document is long, it may take some time for your computer to create the audio file.
You can add this file to your iPod and listen to it on the go.

Resources

Comments

ajoneser said

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on 11/15/2008 very cool, didn't know you could do this

DreamLiving said

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on 8/3/2008 Keep up with Mac tips. I'm a new Mac user.

alexiapetrakos said

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on 2/21/2008 Hm. I haven't encountered that problem before. Make sure the text file is open on your desktop before you run the automator workflow... I'll keep looking though.