How to Rename Multiple Files At Once
This is a nice trick I bet not every one knows. I don’t know about you but I just hate the DSCN(XXX).jpg file name the digital camera gives pictures. This is especially annoying when you have the pictures from your latest trip to London mixed with your grandpa’s birthday party. After you download all of them to the hard drive, your directory looks like this:
I would prefer if the pictures were named London(1).jpg, London(2).jpg… and Grandpa(1).jpg, Grandpa(2).jpg and so on. Well, this trick will take care of this.
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Select the files that belong to the London trip.
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Right click the file you want to be the “base” file, and select rename. Change it’s name to “London.jpg” and magically all the other selected files will change their name to “London(X).jpg” ( if there are many files it might take a few seconds so hold tight).
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Do the same for the pictures from grandpa’s birthday party.
Your directory will look like this:
How easy is that!!! Indeed a handy trick.
Enjoy
Amit.
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April 7th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Here we have 2 problems.
If I rename the files ( IMG_052.jpg,IMG_053.jpg,IMG_054.jpg,etc) to TEST_052.jpg as per your mentioned procedure, then files rename becomes (IMG_052.jpg, IMG_052(1).jpg etc.) which is somewhat wierd.
Other thing is undo support. Explorer could only support undo upto 5.
anyway, i dont know that renaming can be done this way too. good post.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Nice one was not aware such a thing existed
April 13th, 2008 at 12:33 am
[...] How to rename Multiple Files at Once - Oh man has this driven me crazy over the past few years. [...]
May 7th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
[...] cool trick for renaming files you did not knowread more | digg [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
thanks a lot amit, your trick really worked
July 1st, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I somehow decided that it was 2009, so told my camera to transfer my photos and rename them Glastonbury 2009, and my softwear automatically adds 0001 etc to the end. If I use this method (to change all my photos to have 2008 instead of 2009) I only get 1, 2, 3 at the end, so then when my photos go in alphabetical order, I get 1, 10, 11, 12……2, 20, 21, 22……3, 30, 31, 32 etc! It would be so much better if it put the additional zeros.
July 6th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Really useful!! Thanks a lot!!
July 18th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Nice trick…
it can be found at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320167
How about renaming just the middle part of multiple files?
July 20th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
This is just what I been wishing for and it works great. One question (or problem though) is there any way to add subsequent files and have them pick up the numbering sequence assigned to the orginal batch….If you can could you please answer me by email as I don’t browse much.
Thank You So Much.