Batch renaming folders and sub-folders

[imacken]

The structure of my photos library is Y/Y_M/Y_M_D, e.g. 2010/2010_04/2010_04_16 for today.
I want to change all the '_' to '-'.
Does anyone know an easy way of doing this?

 

[Bill2]

You can do it in Irfanview. Heres a couple of tutorials.

Batch

Rename a Series of Files With IrfanView

 

[imacken]

Thanks, but I can only see how to rename files there. It's just the folders and sub-folders I need to rename.

 

[imacken]

Maybe it could be done in a DOS command to copy the folders and files, then I could just delete the originals.
As an example I want to change e:\2010\2010_04\2010_04_16\img1234.jpg to e:\2010\2010-04\2010-04-16\img1234.jpg.

 

[CommonTater]

The structure of my photos library is Y/Y_M/Y_M_D, e.g. 2010/2010_04/2010_04_16 for today.
I want to change all the '_' to '-'.
Does anyone know an easy way of doing this?

File Renamer for Windows 7 - Rename all your files, folders and shortcuts - Windows 7 Download

JoeJoe's freeware utilities - [Rename Master]

And there are dozens more... Google is your friend.

But I would also suggest that your current scheme leads to unnecessrily long pathnames... You are repeating the year 3 times, the month twice in each path. You could do it as YYYY\MM\DD and have a much simpler scheme... Today would then be 2010\04\16... But that's just a thought...

 

[Bill2]

You could use a 3rd party app like renamer. See this page.

How do I ... use ReNamer to batch rename files? | Microsoft Windows | TechRepublic.com

 

[imacken]

Sorry guys, I'm struggling to see how any of these can rename folders. As you say there are a zillion tools out there for file renaming, but I just can't see how to get them to work on folders.
The first process in them all is 'select files'.

 

[Bill2]

try this.

 

[CommonTater]

Sorry guys, I'm struggling to see how any of these can rename folders. As you say there are a zillion tools out there for file renaming, but I just can't see how to get them to work on folders.
The first process in them all is 'select files'.

I found this... but have not tested or used it... no promises...

Fast Folder Rename v1.5 - batch folder renamer :: skyjuicesoftware.com


This one has checkboxes visible for renaming folders... again, untested...

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

 

[imacken]

Thanks again for all your help guys.
Well, this proved to be a lot more difficult than I imagined it would be! Couldn't get most of your suggestions to work with folders, or couldn't understand the interface, e.g. BulkRenameUtility!
Others needed to be bought for sub-folders to work, etc. etc. I eventually got it done using Fast Folder Rename which is a weird bit of software that needs the files to be dropped into it to work. No real indication of that from the interface.
Anyway, it didn't handle sub-folders, so I had to drag and drop every set of folders into it from Explorer. Only about 150!

CommonTater: I don't use your suggested naming convention because it creates lots of folders with duplicate names, e.g. 16 for today, so searching is more tricky. But thanks for the suggestion anyway.

 

[CommonTater]

CommonTater: I don't use your suggested naming convention because it creates lots of folders with duplicate names, e.g. 16 for today, so searching is more tricky. But thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Ahhh... good point.

 

[dalton2]

Sorry guys, I'm struggling to see how any of these can rename folders. As you say there are a zillion tools out there for file renaming, but I just can't see how to get them to work on folders. The first process in them all is 'select files'.

I had exactly the same problem: I was looking for a piece of software which allowed me to batch rename multiple subfolders, and after a hard search I finally found it:

Features - Bulk Rename Utility

It works great and it's 32/64 bit.

 

[raedxxi]

There's an old an humble program http://rename.lupasfreeware.org/download.php
It's a practical solution. Supports copying a list of names from a text editor to change with them the folder's names.
Ask for any problem you have to get this working.