Where the hell was I that day?
Geek Out of Touch
Okay, this tops 'tree.' Last year I learned very belatedly about the 'tree' command at the Windows XP command prompt, which had somehow escaped me during my previous thirteen years of using Microsofty things. It kinda threw me into a crisis of faith in my expertise. Now comes this. I don't feel as indignant this time, cuz so far not a single one of the six or seven others I mentioned this to knows about it either.
Windows XP supports sequential batch renaming of files. I dunno how many times (before I found the indispensable Flexible Renamer) that I banged my head on the desk looking for something like this when organizing pictures and mp3s and the googol myriad content trinkets I've scattered about.
So it works like this: I got a bunch of files in a folder that I want to rename sequentially. In this case, icons:
I want to rename all the icons that look like ipods as "ipod", but since filenames can't match identically in Windows World, we'll need a sequential number so the filename remains unique. This is what I do.
The default base sequence number is 0, but sequences will start from the number attached to the file you rename. If I already had 11 icons named ipod, I'd rename the first file "ipod (12).ico" and the rest will start at 13. There is, unfortunately, no way that I know of to format the number any other way but parenthetically, which sucks for the web.
Oh, yeah, and while you need to include an extension for the one file you're renaming by hand, the function ignores the extensions on the other selected files. So if some are jpgs and some are gifs, you can do them all at once.
The renaming action is also undoable (ctrl-Z), but there's a limited number of undo actions, so it stops at ten files.
If you're somewhat advanced and are familiar with regular expressions (regex), just forget all this and use Flexible Renamer is your key to the kingdom. I love it, and it's free.
So yeah...now ya know.
And shut up, Mac people. I know I'm rationalizing, but sometimes it's all we got.
Okay, this tops 'tree.' Last year I learned very belatedly about the 'tree' command at the Windows XP command prompt, which had somehow escaped me during my previous thirteen years of using Microsofty things. It kinda threw me into a crisis of faith in my expertise. Now comes this. I don't feel as indignant this time, cuz so far not a single one of the six or seven others I mentioned this to knows about it either.
Windows XP supports sequential batch renaming of files. I dunno how many times (before I found the indispensable Flexible Renamer) that I banged my head on the desk looking for something like this when organizing pictures and mp3s and the googol myriad content trinkets I've scattered about.
So it works like this: I got a bunch of files in a folder that I want to rename sequentially. In this case, icons:
I want to rename all the icons that look like ipods as "ipod", but since filenames can't match identically in Windows World, we'll need a sequential number so the filename remains unique. This is what I do.
- Select all the files with names that you want to change.
- Find the file that will start the sequence, and hit F2 (or right click -> rename).
- Rename the file like so: filename (#).ext, so in my case I'll rename the file "ipod (1).ico"
- Click OK and *ding!* - all the selected files are renamed.
The default base sequence number is 0, but sequences will start from the number attached to the file you rename. If I already had 11 icons named ipod, I'd rename the first file "ipod (12).ico" and the rest will start at 13. There is, unfortunately, no way that I know of to format the number any other way but parenthetically, which sucks for the web.
Oh, yeah, and while you need to include an extension for the one file you're renaming by hand, the function ignores the extensions on the other selected files. So if some are jpgs and some are gifs, you can do them all at once.
The renaming action is also undoable (ctrl-Z), but there's a limited number of undo actions, so it stops at ten files.
If you're somewhat advanced and are familiar with regular expressions (regex), just forget all this and use Flexible Renamer is your key to the kingdom. I love it, and it's free.
So yeah...now ya know.
And shut up, Mac people. I know I'm rationalizing, but sometimes it's all we got.
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