You will see the matching items in the Preview window. The number of items you've selected will be displayed, along with search and replace values, a list of options, and a preview window displaying results of the search and replace values you've entered.Įnter text or a regular expression to find the files in your selection that contain the criteria matching your entry. Notice that the Explorer's 'Undo Rename' (Ctrl+Z) command enables the ability to undo the last change.Īfter selecting files in Windows File Explorer, right-clicking and selecting PowerRename (which will appear only if enabled in PowerToys), the PowerRename window will appear. PowerRename enables a single bulk rename. Since all of the files are uniquely named, this would have taken a long time to complete manually one-by-one. In this demo, all instances of the file name 'foo' are replaced with 'foobar'.

Undo a rename operation after it is completed.

Check expected rename results in a preview window before finalizing a bulk rename.

Perform a regular expression rename on multiple files.

Perform a search and replace on a targeted section of file names.

Modify the file names of a large number of files, without giving all of the files the same name.

Just keep in mind if you have millions+ files/items as it may take awhile to iterate all of them before any renames are carried out.PowerRename is a bulk renaming tool that enables you to: Putting $() around a Get-ChildItem ensures that all of the currently existing files get returned first and are then piped into Rename-Item, rather than piped in dynamically without the subexpression operator. Instead of 'dir |' I can use: dir | where-object -filterscript 'dir -recurse' outputs all the files, folders and sub-folders.

Notes: 'dir' is an alias of 'Get-ChildItem'. Using '|' will pipeline the output of 'dir' for the command that follows. You can use 'dir' to see all the files in the folder.

Notice: address must incorporate quotes '' if there are spaces involved. Type: 'PowerShell' and open the 'Windows PowerShell' command window.

Rename multiple files in windows 10