Rename Master’s interface looks and feels slightly more complicated than that of Caterpixer. The main reason for that are the buttons and options that are presented to the user in the lower half of the interface. The upper part consists of a file browser that is displaying the directory structure of the computer system on the left side and the actual files of the active directory on the right. A file filter is available to display only files matching a certain pattern. This is also the location where the new file names can be previewed before starting the renaming.

The lower part of the interface consists of four tabs that are used to configure the renaming. The scripting tab is the main tab in the renaming process. It contains ten options to rename the selected files which can be divided into options to add and remove characters. A click on the + sign in front of a filter will open the configuration menu of that filter. Any changes made to that filter will later be displayed in the overview as well.

A click on the preview button will display the new file names in the upper part of the interface next to the old names. The three additional tabs in the lower area of the interface can be used to configure case and wildcards, counting and text files that are used to rename files.

Windows users who want more control over the renaming process might want to take a look at Rename Master. The application takes more time to adjust to but rewards the user with better options to batch rename files in the operating system.

Related posts

• The Only Batch File Renamer You Ever Need (11)
• Software Programming Helper: File Substring Replacement Utility (6)
• Batch File Rename (7)
• PFrank File Renamer (3)
• Metamorphose File And Folder Renamer (1)

The computer software supports both renaming operations on file contents but also on file names and supports the use of the two wildcards (*) and (?). The interface of the application is tab driven and the user is working from the left tab to the right to configure the renaming operations. Source files will be selected in the first tab. This can be done by typing them in, pasting them in or using a file browser that unfortunately cannot load the contents of directories into the application. Files can be excluded by dates.

The next tab defines the file replacements. It is possible to define multiple strings to be replaced in here. The options in the third tab contain several important settings like matching only whole words, enabling wildcard use, case sensitivity or limiting the replacements.

The fourth tab contains logging options. A record log will be written by default which will log all operations. This can be changed to disable logging or to log only positive or negative hits. The batch tab is the final tab which allows to execute batch files before or after the operation.

File Substring Replacement Utility is compatible with all editions of Windows including Windows XP and Windows Vista. It can be downloaded directly from the developer’s homepage.

Update: Program is Shareware. Possible free alternatives are TurboSR, String Find & Replace or Replace Text.

Related posts

• The Only Batch File Renamer You Ever Need (11)
• Batch File Rename (7)
• PFrank File Renamer (3)
• Batch Rename Files With Rename Master (10)
• Rename And Copy Files With Caterpixer (6)

Filters can be used to exclude or include files and folders. It is for instance possible to exclude hidden or system files from being renamed. Several different name manipulation rules can be added including adding, deleting, replacing or serializing characters.

Interesting is the support of various meta tag information that can be added to the filename. Supported are among others ID3, Avi, EXIF, IPTC, HASH and File information. This means that ReNamer can be used to rename photo, music or video collections with ease.

The screenshot above is demonstrating a basic renaming example. The first rule removes all characters with the exception of the file extension from the filename while the second rule adds the playing time and the file size as the name name for the selected files.

ReNamer can also be used to strip certain characters from files, cleanup file and folder names (remove brackets among other things) and transliterate non-English characters with English representations.

It provides furthermore access to regular expressions and Pascal Script for advanced renaming needs. Rules can be saved as presets that can be loaded into the application again at any time to perform the same renaming operations again.

The software is very responsive and definitely one of the best file renamers for the Windows platform.

Related posts

• Batch File Rename (7)
• Software Programming Helper: File Substring Replacement Utility (6)
• Windows Timer (10)
• Windows Software To Create Multiple Folders At Once (13)
• Windows Registry Watcher (5)

The second tab is the Renamer tab which basically contains all the renaming options. The functionality in this tab is huge and it contains a few extras for certain file types that are worth exploring. The layout in this tab is a bit unusual. The upper left contains seven operations that can be selected: change length, directory, insert, modifications, move text, replace or swap. An operation is selected by either dragging and dropping or double-clicking.

Once at least one operation has been selected the menu of that operation becomes available to the right. The replace operation for instance contains in depth settings to replace text in filenames, folders and / or extensions. Several special operations are available in that menu. The application can read and make use of mp3 id3 tags and image meta information and use those information in the renaming process.

The options provided for every operation are very detailed and the user will spend most of the time in that tab to explore the various possibilities. Inexperienced users might feel intimidated by the amount of options while experienced users will love it.

Related posts

• VLC Media Player 1.0 Released (9)
• Open Office 4 Kids (11)
• Open Office 3.1 (17)
• Music Management Software Jajuk (6)
• ID3 Mass Tagger (0)

That is not helpful if all file names should be named differently and renaming files individually would take to much time. Enter the batch file rename application Text to File Renamer. Text to File Renamer is a portable application that can speed up the file renaming process.

The user can drag and drop files into the left pane of the application and enter file names typed, pasted or entered by dragging and dropping a text file into the right panel. The lines should correspond and the user can use the right pane as a text editor to move names around so that each filename will be renamed properly.

When all lines correspond to each other a click on the Rename button renames all listed file names at once. The file extension is not listed because it will remain as is. The process is considerably shorter than renaming the files manually but the application could use a few automatic manipulation options to reduce the time it takes to enter the new filenames.

Related posts

• The Only Batch File Renamer You Ever Need (11)
• Software Programming Helper: File Substring Replacement Utility (6)
• Rename And Copy Files With Caterpixer (6)
• PFrank File Renamer (3)
• Batch Rename Files With Rename Master (10)

The functionality however is making more than up for it. First of all, PFrank supports wildcards and regular expressions making it an excellent tool for both beginners and advanced users alike. You might now wildcards from your operating system, they are normally substituted with the char *, a search for all mp3 files of a folder would look like this for instance *.mp3.

Regular expressions on the other hand offer a wider variety of meta characters suitable for advanced file matching needs, it is for instance possible to exclude files with certain chars.

Many pre-defined renaming rules have already been added to PFrank and it is rarely the case that users have to use their own regular expressions for a renaming process. Some of the popular filters already included are the filter to remove all non alpha-numeric characters, to add music information at the beginning or end of a file, to add numbers or chars to a filename, to remove all numbers and to insert other file information like file properties or folder information.

If none of the default renaming templates suit your needs you can create your own. The homepage of PFrank contains additional information and links to tutorials that explain Regular Expressions in greater detail, definitely worth a visit if you ask me.

Related posts

• The Only Batch File Renamer You Ever Need (11)
• Software Programming Helper: File Substring Replacement Utility (6)
• Batch File Rename (7)
• Rename And Copy Files With Caterpixer (6)
• Metamorphose File And Folder Renamer (1)

With Renamer NG it takes only a few seconds. You start by selecting the directory that contains all the files that you want to rename. They are listed in the main panel afterwards. Now click on Operations > Replace. This opens a new menu with five options: Replace, With, Match Case, Before and After.

• Replace defines the characters that you want to replace with different ones.
• With are of course those characters that you want them replaced with.
• Match Case defines if your input is case sensitive
• Before displays how the filename looks like before the changes
• After shows how it would look like after the changes, both in realtime

This is the basic process. Renamer NG offers much more though. You can add more than one dir and additionale files, filter files, insert characters, use regular expressions and add the current date and time to the filenames. I’m not able to list all of the options but you have to believe me that there are plenty of them.

I especially like it that it is easy to use so that everyone will be able to change filenames. Computer Geeks on the other hand will love the additional renaming options such as regular expressions.

Related posts

• The Only Batch File Renamer You Ever Need (11)
• Software Programming Helper: File Substring Replacement Utility (6)
• PFrank File Renamer (3)
• Batch File Rename (7)
• Rename And Copy Files With Caterpixer (6)