Most of us today use our computers to store large numbers of files. These can be photos, songs, videos, documents and other files. Let's take a situation where you have copied a large number of photos from a camera to your Windows computer. Most of the time these photos have weird names set by the camera and let's say you want to rename them all at once. So how can we do it?
Read also: - How to delete large folders simultaneously with CMD
How to batch rename files in Windows
You can rename batch files in Windows using Windows Explorer, Command Prompt, or Power Shell, or by using a third-party application. Here is a brief description of each of the methods mentioned above:
Windows Explorer
The easiest way to rename batch files in Windows is through Windows Explorer, which explores all files and folders stored on your computer.
- First, open Windows Explorer and go to the folder that contains all the files you want to rename.
- Select the required files by selecting them with a mouse while holding down the Control key or using Control + A if you want to select all files in that folder.
- Now, right-click on the first file in the selection and select Rename.
- Rename as you wish so that the files are renamed TUO_GIVEN_FILE_NAME (1) .jpg, TUO_GIVEN_FILE_NAME (2) .jpg, TUO_GIVEN_FILE_NAME (3) .jpg,… ..etc.
Symbol of the system
The second way to batch rename files is via the command prompt in Windows. We can rename the files at the command prompt using the rename command. It can also be used to batch change the file extension, which cannot be done with the method above.
- To batch rename files using Command Prompt, first open Command Prompt by right-clicking on the folder where all the files you want to rename are located while holding down the Shift key and then select “Open dialog. I command here ". This opens the command window.
- Now, enter the rename command in the window and hit Enter to rename the files. You can use the wildcard character * to select multiple files. The command to rename all jpg files in the current folder with the png extension is as follows:
rename * .jpg * .png
Shell Power
Power Shell is like a more advanced command prompt. In Power Shell, we can redirect the output of one command to another just like we do on Linux or Unix systems. In the following method, we send the output of the Dir command which lists all the files in a directory to the Rename-Item command which renames the file as needed. Below are the steps to use this method:
- Open Power Shell from the start menu.
- Use the cd command to go to the folder where your files are located. For example, you can use the following to change the directory to D: myfolder:
cd D: myfolder
- Now, rename files using Piped Dir with Rename-Item command. The following command renames the "0" (zero) character in filenames to an underscore.
Dir | Rename Item - New Name {$ _. Name - replace "0", "_"}
- The Rename-Item command has advanced options that you can apply based on the result you want to achieve.
Third-party app
If you want advanced batch file renaming options other than those provided by Windows Explorer, but don't want to mess with the command prompt as well, using a third-party app might be better for you. Bulk Name Changer is a batch file renaming application for Windows and is free to download. It has many advanced options like numbering, deleting, replacing and adding characters that you can use according to your needs to rename files. You can preview your changes in the New Name column. Click the Rename button to rename the files.
