Stupid Windows Trick – Mass Renaming
Here’s a trick which you don’t use every day, but I believe that every thing you know can come in handy some day. This is a stupid little trick that I discovered quite by chance. I am not sure where anyone would want to use this, but here’s a trick to rename multiple files in the explorer in one go.
Take a look at the screen shot below. It shows a large number of files with different file names and extensions. Now if for some reason, I wanted to rename them all to something else, this is how I would proceed.
- Press Ctrl+A to select them all (or you could Ctrl+Click to select only a few).
- Press F2 to enter into rename mode (note you will only be renaming one file here).
- Type in the new name (in my example, I choose Image) and press enter.
- All your selected files are renamed Image, Image (1), Image (2), and so on and they retain their original extensions (see image below):
Cool trick, huh? Well, I did say that it is a stupid trick.
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April 28th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I could have used this about six months ago when I was doing a web project for a client. not stupid.
April 28th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Thanks Burch, well I guess I was right first time. Every little thing you know can come in handy someday
March 26th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Thanks for the tip, this actually came in very handy for me. I listen to audio books on my BB, but all the books are the same no title track 1, track 2 etc. up to 100 and are separated into multiple books, but if you want to put all the books you end up with 10 track 1′s, 10 track 2′s etc and then doesn’t play in order. with this tip I was able to rename all the tracks at one time so now its book1(1) book2(1). Very helpful and saved me. Thanks for posting.
March 27th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Great. You are welcome
April 19th, 2009 at 7:55 am
WOW.. this REALLY helped me with a Client! Just wanted to say thanks!
January 25th, 2010 at 9:35 am
I like your style
July 7th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
there is a short dos script to mass rename files with similar names:
for /f “delims=’.’ tokens=1,*” %i in (‘dir /b “*.txt*”‘) do @ren “%i.%j” “%i.txt”
July 7th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Thanks – that is cooler
September 7th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Hey, thanks for the tip. This ain’t stupid, it’s very helpful IMO. Your method solved a problem that a mass renaming program couldn’t solve because the program couldn’t read the characters in the filename. Many thanks.
September 8th, 2010 at 12:40 am
Well sometimes, its the stupid things that are the most helpful
I am glad this helped you.
Cheers.
June 30th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Isn’t it ironic? nobody got the point, that this “feature” is a pain in the ass, as it may get you into serious trouble, if it is accidentially used, as there’s no undo in windows explorer. just look at the two screenshots. how do i disable this bullshit?
July 3rd, 2011 at 2:38 am
Of course, there are so many features that could get you in trouble. Shift+Delete for example after pressing Ctrl+A. C’mon, how can you use this accidentally?
September 4th, 2011 at 10:07 pm
@Vaibhav: This is really useful! Thanks so much for sharing!
@SineadOConnor: It’s still possible to undo by pressing “Ctrl + z”. I accidentally rename it wrongly and was able to undo it just now when I tried it haha.
January 13th, 2012 at 7:13 am
Smartest solution is the easiest one. this is so far beyound stupidity.. this is briliant buddy!
Thank you