Stupid Windows Trick - Mass Renaming

Windows LogoHere’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.

Files

  1. Press Ctrl+A to select them all (or you could Ctrl+Click to select only a few).
  2. Press F2 to enter into rename mode (note you will only be renaming one file here).
  3. Type in the new name (in my example, I choose Image) and press enter.
  4. All your selected files are renamed Image, Image (1), Image (2), and so on and they retain their original extensions (see image below):

Files

Cool trick, huh? Well, I did say that it is a stupid trick.



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2 Responses to “Stupid Windows Trick - Mass Renaming”

  1. I could have used this about six months ago when I was doing a web project for a client. not stupid.

  2. Thanks Burch, well I guess I was right first time. Every little thing you know can come in handy someday :)

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