Windows 10 Rename multiple files in Windows explorer

dontaylor said:

Is it possible to rename only part of a filename when multiple files are selected in Windows Explorer?

I sometimes have hundreds of files to rename and I have to do them individually.

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Josephur said:

If you are renaming hundreds of files you really should learn how to use a command prompt or powershell

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Josephur said:

It really depends on the rename operation, can you give us an example of what you're renaming the files to/from?

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Josephur said:

ok let's take a folder with a few files in it as an example.

If we start a Command Prompt (I recommend not doing this as Administrator just in case you goof, don't want to rename important files accidentally)

So typically it will drop you into C:\Users\YourUsername

You can then use the CD command to Change Directory to where you need for instance in our example the files reside in C:\Autocad

C:\Users\YourUsername>CD C:\Autocad

Then you can use dir to get a directory listing which will show you your files.

In our case it returns the three test files I created for this exercise.
1234-test1.dwg
1234-test2.dwg
1234-test3.dwg

C:\Autocad>ren 1234-test*.dwg project1-*.dwg

C:\Autocad>dir *.dwg
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 6882-818E

Directory of C:\Autocad>

08/15/2016 06:41 PM 13 project1-1.dwg
08/15/2016 06:41 PM 13 project1-2.dwg
08/15/2016 06:41 PM 13 project1-3.dwg
3 File(s) 39 bytes

See how the 1234-test# was replaced with project1-#? This is just a simple example, you can do even more with different wildcards and scripting. If you get into PowerShell scripting you should easily be able to find PowerShell scripts that do an even more extensive job. You can probably also find a program that accepts regex patterns and renames files based on them.

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Josephur said:

ok let's take a folder with a few files in it as an example.

If we start a Command Prompt (I recommend not doing this as Administrator just in case you goof, don't want to rename important files accidentally)

So typically it will drop you into C:\Users\YourUsername

You can then use the CD command to Change Directory to where you need for instance in our example the files reside in C:\Autocad

C:\Users\YourUsername>CD C:\Autocad

Then you can use dir to get a directory listing which will show you your files.

In our case it returns the three test files I created for this exercise.
1234-test1.dwg
1234-test2.dwg
1234-test3.dwg

C:\Autocad>ren 1234-test*.dwg project1-*.dwg

C:\Autocad>dir *.dwg
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 6882-818E

Directory of C:\Autocad>

08/15/2016 06:41 PM 13 project1-1.dwg
08/15/2016 06:41 PM 13 project1-2.dwg
08/15/2016 06:41 PM 13 project1-3.dwg
3 File(s) 39 bytes

See how the 1234-test# was replaced with project1-#? This is just a simple example, you can do even more with different wildcards and scripting. If you get into PowerShell scripting you should easily be able to find PowerShell scripts that do an even more extensive job. You can probably also find a program that accepts regex patterns and renames files based on them.

Click to expand...

dontaylor said:

Do you know how to add four figures to an existing list of files?

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