Main Window
On this page you will find an overview of all parts and functions of the main window of the FileRenamer with a description of the respective function. An explanation of the functions of other program parts of the FileRenamer can be found in the function overview.
On the left side of the main window, there is a list of all files and folders currently loaded. When the renaming is started, these are the files and folders that will be renamed. On the right side, you can see options and settings for the modifcation and on the bottom right, you can see the button "Apply Changes" with which you can start renaming the loaded files.
Dateien
- File and Folder List: All files and folders that should be renamed have to be added to the list on the left side of the main window. The simplest way to add files and folders is to just dreck and drop them on to the program. Otherwise, you can also use the buttons "Add Files" or "Search Folders" under the list with which you can add single files or search complete folders. With clicking on "Remove all", you can remove the files and folders currently loaded from the list. Individual files can be deleted with selecting them and clicking the DEL key (with Shift + DEL you can remove all files that are not selected). Files can be moved with the mouse in the list to another position. In the list columns, you can find information about the old and the new name of the file (name and preview), the status, the type (format column) and the file path. The status shows whether the file or folder has recently been added (new), whether the renaming was successful or whether there was not a change or an error.
- Include > Files / Folders / Filter: At this point, you can specify whether files and/or folders should be renamed. When adding files and folders to the list, this option will be taken into account. For example, if you drag-and-drop a folder onto the program, either only the files or the folder or both will be added depending on which or both checkboxes are activated. If you want to use specific search options for adding the files and folders, you can determine them under "Filter".
Changes of File Names and File Extension
- Changes > Name / Extension: Here you can find the actions and rules that are applied in the name and/or the extension of the file or the folder when renaming. You can activate a group of functions with the checkbox in front of the group title and with clicking on "Options" you can show and hide the group. With a click with the right mouse button on the title of one of these sections, all actions of the respective section can be activated or deactivated. There are similar options and functions available for the file name and the file extension, that can be defined and applied independent from each other. Therefore, in the following, the options are explained in common. If you have specified in the settings, that the name should be edited as a whole, or if you only want to rename folders, the options for the file extension will not be shown.
- Changes > Name / Extension > Mask: Here you can define a mask for the filename. Masks can contain arbitrary characters and placeholders. A list of all placeholders that are available can be found on the page placeholders. For example, the mask "%name%" would change nothing, because just the old filename is taken. Apart from that, the mask "%name%1" would append the number 1 to each filename. Using the mask "photo" would rename each file to the name "photo" - but of course, this is only possible if there is no other file having this name in the same folder.
- Changes > Name / Extension > Search and Replace: If you want to replace some text by another text within your file name or extension, you can use this option. In both text fields, you can also use placeholders and regular expressions. If you want to use regular expressions, you have to activate the corresponding option and you can also work with brackets in the search field and references ($1 etc) in the replace field.
- Changes > Name > Common Replacements: Often, some specific replacements are necessary, such as replacing hyphens, underscores or dots with spaces or vice versa. Those frequent replacements can just be activated or deactivated with a checkbox here.
- Changes > Name / Extension > Insert: With this function, you can insert an arbitrary text at a specific position into the filename. The insert position always refers to the number of characters. That means, "1" would insert the text at the first letter which is the same as appending the text to the front of the name. "2" would insert the text directly after the first letter at the second position and so on. With activating the option "count insert position from the back", you can specify that the position should be determined from the back and not from the front. So, in this case, "2" would insert the text behind the last but not least character. Within the insertion text placeholders can be used.
- Changes > Name / Extension > Delete Text > Delete this Text: Here you can specify a text that should be deleted from the file name. If you activate the option "interpret as regular expression", the text will be applied as regular expression. That means, that for example, with [a-m]+ it is possible to delete all characters from a to m from the file name. Within the text that should be deleted, you can also use placeholders.
- Changes > Name / Extension > Delete Text > Delete Characters after / up to this Character Position: With these options, it is possible to delete text from the middle of a file name depending on the position of the characters, regardless of the characters. The first field defines after which character the deletion begins (you can leave the field blank or write "0" to delete from the beginning) and the second field defines up to which character should be deleted (this field can also be left empty to delete up to the end). For example, if you write 2 in the first field and 5 in the second field, "abcdefg" becomes "abfg".
- Changes > Name / Extension > Delete Character Groups: Under this point, you can find some options that can be used to remove entire character groups from the filename. Available are the character groups spaces, digits, Latin uppercase and lowercase letters, uppercase and lowercase Latin diacritics, Cyrillic and Greek uppercase and lowercase letters as well as special characters.
- Changes > Name / Extension > Append: Here it is possible to define a text that will be attached at the front of the file name as well as another text that will be attached at the back. In both fields, placeholders can be used.
- Changes > Name / Extension > Truncate: In this function group, you can determine whether and how many characters should be cut from the front or the back of the file name. Additionally, it is possible to define a maximum length for the file name. In case that the file name is longer than the specified length, the filename will be shortened. With specifying "0" at this point, the name remains as it is. With the option "cut off from the front for maximum length", you can determine whether it should be cut from the front or the back.
- Changes > Name / Extension > Rewrite: Here you can find some options for rewriting the file name. Using the option "Separate CamelCase", a space will be inserted for each uppercase letter. The option "Replace Diacritics" can be used to replace, for example, each ä, ö and ü by ae, oe and ue. The option "Remove Diacritics" removes all diacritics from their letters, so that ä becomes a and é becomes e and so on. Otherwise, there are also available the two options URL-Encode and URL-Decode with which you can apply the functions URLEncode or URLDecode on the filenames. Furthermore, the options Remove double spaces / hyphens / underscores can be used to reduce multiple occurrences of the characters in question to one occurrence (ab---cd becomes ab-cd).
- Changes > Name / Extension > Writing: With this option, you can change the writing of the file. It is possible to write all letters uppercase or lowercase, to only write the first letter uppercase (capitalize words) or to use a random function.
- Changes > Name / Extension > Number Adjustment: With this function you can increase or decrease numbers within file names by a certain value. The value by which the numbers are increased or reduced can be defined in the field "Increment". Depending on whether you enter a positive or a negative value here, the numbers in the file names are either increased or decreased. If there are multiple numbers in a file name, you can use the field "Position" to determine which of these numbers should be adjusted. Positive numbers in this field can be used to specify the position of the number from the front, negative numbers in this field can be used to indicate the position of the number counted from the back. If you want to adjust all numbers in the filename regardless of their position, you can specify "0" as the position. You can learn more about this feature in the tutorial about numbering files with the FileRenamer in the section "Change existing Numbering of Files".
Changes of File Attributes
- Changes > Attributes: With a click with the right mouse button on the title of this section, all actions of this section can be activated or deactivated.
- Changes > Attributes > Hidden / Read Only / Hidden Extension: With these two options, you can set or remove the file attributes "Hidden", "Read Only" and "Hidden Extension" of files and folders. Select the option "keep" in order to not change the attribute or select one of the options "Set Attribute" or "Remove Attribute" in order to activate or deactivate the corresponding attribute of the file of folder. The availability of the options depends on the operating system used, since not every system provides the same file attributes.
- Changes > Attributes > Modified / Created / Accessed: Using this options, you can change the corresponding date of the last modification, the last access or the creation of files and folders. Activate the option "Keep" to apply no change or activate the option "Change To" and specify the date to which the timestamp of the file of folder should be set. With the option "Set to current time" the current date can be set as file date. With the remaining options, the file date can be set to a different date of the file. Which of the file dates can be changed depends on the used operating system, since not every system provides the same file date types.
Apply Changes
- Apply Changes: With a click on this button, you start changing the files and folders currently added to the list. All renaming and attribute changing options currently activated will be applied. You can find a preview of the new name in the column "Preview" of the file list. After renaming, the file path within the list will be adjusted using the new name so that the files can also be found after renaming, for example to rename them again in another way.