Batch Renamer and Mover (Bram) is a program for Windows that you can use to rename and move files. The program needs to be installed on the system. Please note that it requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.

When you start it you see a folder and file browser plus some options in the main interface. The program assumes that you want to rename files. You need to locate the up arrow button next to the Apply button to change that. Available for option there are Move or Copy and Rename, Rename then Copy or only move or copy related operations.

You then start by selecting a root folder for the operation. Only this root folder will be processed by default. You can make changes to the behavior in the configuration bar. Here it is possible to enable subfolder support and to filter for specific file types only.

The renaming options are displayed on the right side of the footer toolbar. Here it is possible to set the new naming scheme for the files. The program supports variables that you can add to the name with a click on the Parts button. Available for selection are for instance the current name, a number, the date or the parent folder.

A click on Preview displays the new name next to the old one in the file listing. This is handy as it allows you to make modifications to the name scheme in case the new name is not after your liking.

A click on apply processes the files in the selected folder structure. If you have selected to copy or move you will see a folder browser window where you can select the target folder for those operations.

Bram creates a log file of the operation automatically. The program has a few usability issues and nuisances that I’d like to point out. The program window (default 1024×768) for one can only be increased in window size. It is not possible to reduce the size of the window.

The arrow button hides the operations, and it is likely that many users won’t click on it to see what it does. Lastly an option to restore previously made changes would come in handy.

Bram regardless of that is a handy file renaming and moving software for the Windows operating system. Windows users can download the application directly from the developer website.

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.

This preview function makes Wild Rename interesting for complex jobs. It provides two ways to preview the output. The first is by entering a sample filename and watching how it will look like after the renaming and the second, far more interesting, is the so called simulation mode. All files and directories are virtually renamed and the results are displayed. It is therefor possible to check exactly how all files and directories look like after running them through the renaming functions.

Talking about functions: Wild Rename does not offer regular expressions which does make it more appealing to casual users. All renaming functions are directly accessible through buttons in the interface. The process starts by selecting files or directories from the attached directory and file explorer. Once they have been marked at least one renaming operation has to be selected.

The possibilities are to convert to lower or upper case, normalize the files, to insert or remove characters and to add a numeric counter. Besides that it is possible to convert the full name, the filename only, the extension only or a specific range of characters. The transformation is fast and it is possible to log all changes and it is even possible to create an undo file to revert changes if necessary.

The application does not have to be installed, just unpack it to any location on the hard drive and run it from there. Works in Windows XP, no information on other Windows versions that it is compatible with.

Lets say you have a digital camera and create lots of pictures when your on holidays. Those cameras normally name the pictures DSC000001.jpg and its kinda hard to search through those pictures. It would be much easier if you could rename those files with ease so that the filename itself gives you information about the pictures. Pictures of your December 2005 trip to Colorado could be named 2005_12_colorado_001.jpg for example. Easier to recognize isn´t it ? Well, Bulk Renamer can do this for you.