Also check out explorerxp
http://www.explorerxp.com/

When I used windows (moved to linux since then), this was my main file manager. I found the mass-rename feature by accident and it was VERY powerful.

I tried this and at the same time Siren – which I found much easier and just as powerful.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/siren.html

Dude, Total Commander has had this feature for quite a while now! And pretty usefully implemented too: regexes, counters, pre-/suffixes, etc.

I was trying to do this a while ago, and was surprised to find that Windows already provides bulk-renaming functionality.
Select the files to be renamed and hit “f2″, then enter the desired filename, and windows will add an incrementing number onto this for the rest of them.

Oh lord, now we are a software review site? As if the constant news articles weren’t bad enough.

Nice article.

Amazing that some people still need windows.

Cheers

This is not a hack, get this Windows shit off of hackaday.

If I don’t want to write a script to rename a bunch of files the first thing I’m going to do is look for a program with google.

I come here for interesting projects I probably wouldn’t otherwise bump into. Not for boring utility software.

The Rename is what I’m used to using. it has all kinds of tricks up it’s sleeve for renaming bulk files.

http://download.cnet.com/THE-Rename/3000-2248_4-11420.html

on an unrelated note, why do people always have to complain about what gets posted on this site? If you don’t think they’re up to some arbitrary standard you made up, then post your own articles and hacks.

WTF? So using a third-party GUI tool on the most widely used OS is considered a “hack”?

If the writers for this website are having trouble coming up with enough content, perhaps they should go back to having only one hack per day.

I’ve only ever used RegexRenamer, which is great because given some knowledge of regular expressions you could pretty much perform any sort of renaming operation.

It’s free and open-source as well.
http://regexrenamer.sourceforge.net/

I wrote my own program to change file names. It will also change file dates and create folders. Check it out:

http://www.llevine.com/LevineUtilities.html#EnMasse

Have used this bulk rename utility. Powerful. Like it.

Also checkout namefix.pl available for win32, unix and Apple – Opensource, cross platform, free and well supported and its been around since 2000.

That being said, the Bulk Rename Utility & namefix.pl share the same basic feature set, with namefix having more detailed options and specific tools (ie block rename) while BRU has imagetag support.

Feature requests are more than welcome, but over the last 9 years it has basically become feature full.

mem – namefix.pl programmer and maintainer 1999-2009

Oh, and copy-pasting those apparently won’t work because the single quotes get screwed up by the comment system.

@24601: Have you been in hackaday back in the days when pretty good stuff was posted? Well, i had, and i can tell you that this is not like thoose days anymore.

And if you like, you can take a look at this post (it is one of the firsts posts of hackaday):

“welcome citizen engineers. hack a day (beta) is a web magazine devoted to cataloging all the best hacks, mods and diy (do it yourself) projects from around web. each day i’ll post one hack i like, seen or tried and once a week a special how-to. this is in beta, so enjoy the occasional oddity and sawdust while it gets cookin.

why a site? i thought it was time to have one spot on the web with all the things you can do with ipods, digital cameras, consoles, portables, locks, macs, pcs, anything that can be modd’ed or hacked. a lot of the desire to do this is so i don’t have to hunt around as much for ideas. the goal is for anyone who–has an old pda, a tivo, an atari, an ipod, xbox, or any device just sitting around, then hits hackaday.com, bang, sees all the things folks can do with it to void the already expired warranty or get more out of it.

i’ll post some resources like make, pop sci, books and other things to check out too since i get get asked about that a lot.”

link: http://hackaday.com/2004/10/07/introducing-hack-a-day-beta/

So yeah, i complain about this kind of post, because this is not what hackaday innitially was intended to be.
i am not angry, i am sad. i (and the little bunch of people that remains here as readers, from back 2004/5) miss the old posts style, the black & white photos, and the good commenters.

Ps: i do not complain about how many arduinos they use in a cat dispenser. i do not like this kind of posts, about stupid software or obviosly pay-per-post ad.
they still do post really nice things, but they fill the remaining “minimun posts per day” with, sadly, crap.
Back in 2004/5 they did not post very often, but the posts was very good stuff in general.

ps2: sorry for my baaaad english.

ps3: i know i will probably get banned from the comments (because i had before), but i really do not want too much to comment in this days..

@24601,

yes its true – hackaday seems to hate the uzebox and simply ignores its existance, myself and multiple users have submitted it overtime.

hackaday is slowly turning into an advert whore like digg.com :(

¿What a kind hack is this?
C’mon, I don’t care too much about Windows in smartphones, emmbeded hardware, and so on…, but this just overkill.
A rename software with features that can be found in software that yet exists in the BBS era.

thanks for the commercial break. this isn’t new, nor is it a hack. if you must write these things, why not make another section for it all. you could call it “helpful hints and tidbits”, “stuff you may find useful” or “please ignore”.

I have to admit I’m torn over stuff like this.

Is it that there aren’t enough hacks or…something?

WTF? This is totally LAME.

Next article: GUI app for windows to allow bulk archive unpack.

@lekernel
you can use the avr chipset by itself, the arduino is just a development platform.

haha, i know, but some people here tend to forget it :)

@lekernel

Indeed. Just like people that also forget that they can program for PC using a simple editor and a compiler toolchain, but they use overkill IDE’s like Visual Studio for the task.

I hope you are not flaming arduino users when you use overkill IDEs yourself to program.

I’ve been using AntRenamer for 2 years now. It is one of the best batch renamers out there. Check it out.

We need more posts like this!