Batch
Rename 2,000 files
This is the one batch job where the contents do not matter and the names are everything. IMG_4471 through IMG_6520, or scan_001 repeated across nine folders, and a naming convention somebody has to apply before any of it can be filed.
Renaming sits oddly among file jobs. The operation is trivial — it is string manipulation — and yet at two thousand files it is an afternoon of somebody’s life, and the tools that automate it are either a desktop application you have to be allowed to install or a website you have to upload to.
Uploading is the strange one. To change what files are called, the whole contents get transmitted, processed and returned, because that is the only shape a server-based tool can take. The bytes that mattered least to the job travelled the furthest.
Here the folder is read locally and the names are applied locally. Nothing about the contents needs to go anywhere, and nothing does. It also means there is no upper bound worth stating: two thousand files is not a different kind of job from twenty, just a longer one.
Start here
- Open the batch runnerSet the output naming pattern, choose the folder, and run. The pattern controls what every resulting file is called.
- The file workbenchListing, hashing, finding duplicates and inspecting what is actually in a folder — usually what you want before renaming it.
- Hash a fileConfirm two files with different names really are the same file before you treat them as duplicates.
What this will not do
Worth reading before you put a client’s file through it.
- — Browsers do not let a page rename files in place. The renamed copies are written to a folder you choose, or handed back as a ZIP; the originals are untouched.
- — Writing into a folder you choose needs Chrome or Edge. Elsewhere the results come back as a ZIP you unpack.
- — Names are built from a pattern, not from the contents. It cannot read an invoice and name the file after the supplier.
- — Renaming is applied as asked. A pattern that collapses two files onto one name is your decision to check, not something the tool can guess at.
Check it rather than trust it
Turn off your wifi and use any tool here. If the work still happens, the file is not going anywhere — that is a proof you can perform in three seconds, and it beats anything we could write. The longer version, with the protocol and the result, is on the proof page.
Everything here is free, MIT-licensed and has no account, quota or watermark. It is maintained by one person, unpaid. If it saves you an afternoon, you can support the work.