Getting Started

There are two ways to rename files in Filename Tidy: One-click Rename or The Filename Tidy window.

One-click Rename

If you right-click on a file or folder in Windows File Explorer, you can select “Rename with Filename Tidy” and it will attempt to rename the files using your chosen Rename Steps. The default rename steps reformat all detected dates to “Year-Month-Day” format.

If Filename Tidy detects any issues ahead of time or if something goes wrong during the rename, The Filename Tidy window will be shown to explain the issues.

See also

Related settings:

• Enable/disable Add an entry to shell context menu

• Enable/disable One-click rename

Note

If you have just recently installed Filename Tidy, you may need to restart the Explorer process before Filename Tidy appears as an item in its right-click menu. You can do this by:

• opening Task Manager (Ctrl-Shift-Escape),

• select the “Processes” tab,

• select “Windows Explorer” then select “Restart Task”.

or you can restart your computer.

Note

On Windows 11, you may need to hold down the shift key when you right-click to see the Filename Tidy entry. Alternatively, select the “Show more options” entry at end of the context menu.

The Filename Tidy window

Screenshot of the bulk rename screen.

When you launch the app, the Filename Tidy window will show you the bulk rename screen, which has two main areas:

• The File Queue – the list of files/folders to be renamed

• The Rename Steps – applied to all files/folders in the queue

The Rename Steps

The rename steps are a recipe that describes how to rename each file in the queue, step by step.

The rename steps drawer is at the top of the window and is initially folded away, to give more screen space to the File Queue. You can click anywhere on the drawer to expand it, where you can add, delete, disable, or edit a step.

The kinds of steps you can add are:

• Reformat date to Year-Month-Day

  • reorders the date and time components so that year comes first, then month, day-of-month, hour, minute, and second, i.e. the ISO 8601 calendar date representation (or something close to it, depending on your choice of separators between the components)

• Add text before/after date

  • for example, you may wish to add a space or underscore character between the date and the rest of the filename, or surround each date with brackets.

  • additional options:

    • “Skip if text already present” – e.g. only add an underscore after the date if there isn’t already an underscore there.

    • “Don’t add text to start/end of filename”

• Move date to somewhere else in the filename

  • Moves a date to the start or end of the filename.

• Remove date

• Find and replace text

  • search for occurrences of a fixed string or any string that matches a given regular expression

  • replace the occurrences with a fixed string or use JavaScript-style special replacement patterns to refer back to the matched string in your replacement string.

If any rename step cannot be applied to a particular file (e.g. you have a step “Move 2nd date to Start of filename” but only one date was found), that file will not be renamed.

You can temporarily disable a rename step by clicking the toggle button in the top-right corner of each step, or delete it entirely using the icon button below.

The File Queue

The file queue is the list of files and folders that will be renamed when you click the “Rename all” button.

You can add files and folders by dragging and dropping them onto the file queue, or by clicking the “Add files” button.

The file queue shows a preview of what the file will be renamed to. The difference between the original filename (“From:”) and the new filename (“To:”) is highlighted. If there is no difference, then the entry is dimmed.

See also

Related settings:

• Highlight the parts of the filename that will change when renamed

• Hide common parent folders among file paths

If a previewed new filename is not what you expected, you can click a file to go to the The File Details screen and see the dates Filename Tidy found.

If a rename would lead to a filename conflict, such as two files in the queue being renamed to the same filename, or a file being renamed to a file that already exists in the file system, then Filename Tidy will disable the “Rename all” button and show a warning indicating which files are in conflict.

Manual rename

If you want to overrule the rename steps for one file, you can right click a file and select “Manual rename”and manually enter a new filename. The rename doesn’t take effect immediately – it will stay in the file queue and be renamed when you click Rename all.

Manual renames are indicated in the file queue with a red pencil icon.