Quick Rename of Files in Bulk

Written by Eric Wyatt (last updated June 17, 2019)

4

Over the years there have been several times I have needed to batch rename groups of files. Whether this is 10 files or 100, the process can be time consuming and tedious. Fortunately, Windows provides a way to quickly rename a group of files quickly, as long as you are OK with the file names following the same naming structure and to be in sequential order.

To rename your files quickly follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the folder with the files you wish to rename. In my case I have a folder with 18 different photos. (See Figure 1.)

    2. Figure 1. Explorer window with several files selected.

  2. Select all the files you want renamed. If it is all the files in a folder you can press Ctrl+A to select all the files.
  3. Press F2. Windows will activate the edit name function of the first file.
  4. Rename the File with the name you want. In my case I entered "Web Images Large."
  5. When you're done with the new name, press Enter. Windows automatically renames all the selected files with the new name and it will add a number to the end contained within parentheses, i.e., (10). (See Figure 2.)

    6. Figure 2. All files of Explorer Window renamed with same naming structure.

Now you can quickly edit a large group of images to have the same common naming structure, without downloading any third-party software.

 This tip (13644) applies to Windows 7, 8, and 10.

Author Bio

Eric Wyatt

Eric Wyatt is a swell guy (or so his friends tell him). He is a formally trained designer and branding expert, bringing a wide range of skills to his Tips.Net articles. ...

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What is four minus 0?

2020-06-22 02:29:13

gerdami

@Sheryl
Yes, with FreeCommander XE

2020-06-21 16:31:05

Sheryl

That's fine when you want to rename all the files to the same name. Is there a way to change the first few characters of each file name to the same first few characters. For instance: how would you change all file names beginning with "WindowsTipsblahblahblah.pdf" to "WTblahblahblah.pdf", keeping the rest of the file name the same as it was?

2019-06-18 02:41:45

gerdami

FreeCommander XE has a very good renaming feature that does more than this tip.

2019-06-17 22:35:56

Bob Ama

At one point Windows appended a date & time stamp to a large number of my files. "budget.xlsx" became "budget (2019_06_17 19_34_34 UTC).xlsx" and "essay.docx" became "essay (2019_06_17 19_34_34 UTC).docx", for example.

I was able to rename all of them using the utility found at https://www.advancedrenamer.com/. It's not the most intuitive program you've ever used, but it did the job quite well. It sure beats having to manually rename all of those files one by one by one by one.

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