Rename multiple files in Windows without external tools

In this video we rename an image sequence exported from Blender using a built in Windows tool. We do the renaming in such a way that the trailing numbers stay the same while only the first part of the name is changed.

Written version:

Sometimes you make a mistake and end up with a bunch of files with undesirable file names.

Here we have rendered an image sequence of a hundred png files and we want to change their name without affecting their numbering.

Let’s go one level up to the folder and shift right click on it. Now we can select, “open command window here” in order to have the command prompt already pointing to the right folder when it opens.

We are going to use the rename command, so let’s type in “ren”. Next we’ll tell it to take any file in this folder with the name “wrongname”. We’ll put * in the end to indicate that this name can be followed by any characters, in our case the trailing numbers.

Now we’ll type in the correct name followed again by a *.

If we hit enter, the files get renamed while their numbers stay the same.

If you have spaces in your file names, you simply need to wrap the names inside double quotes like this.

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