Surely you already know many of the ways to organize folders and files on Mac computers, but there is one aspect that you may not have known and can be very useful. We refer to renaming several files in bulk without having to go one by one. There is a way to do it that is not secret or requires activating a very specific functionality, but that is not well known by those who have been on macOS for a short time.
On what kinds of occasions can it be useful?
This action can be very useful when you want to rename several files with a common theme. For example, imagine that you have a folder with photographs taken on your vacation, you can rename them all at the same time with a similar name . For example “Vacation 1, Vacation 2, Vacation 3…”. However, it is not useful if you want it to be a completely different name , since in that case you will have to change them individually, although if there are several that do share that name, you can always modify it in batches as we will see below.
The method you should follow to rename files
In a traditional way, you probably already know that by right clicking with the mouse or trackpad you will find the option “Rename”, the name of the file or folder being shaded at that time and being able to write there. Then it will be to press the Enter button and that’s it. In the case of several files, the procedure is the same, having to select all of them by secondary clicking and also clicking on ” Rename “, although afterwards we find a subtle difference. When you do this, you will see that a window has appeared on the screen in which we must choose the name format that we want to give to all these files.
- Name format: you can choose the type of format you want to give to the name structure. If you want a personalized name to appear next to a numerical index, you must put “Name and index”, if you want it to be the name accompanied by a number of up to 5 digits you must put “Name and counter” and if you want it to be the date, then “Name and date”.
- Location: choose where you want the differential element of the new name to appear, before or after the element that will be the same.
- Custom format: this is the value that will remain the same in all names. Continuing with the example explained above, this is where you would put “Holidays”.
- Start numbers at: if you chose a number format and you don’t want it to start at 0 or 1, you can write the number you want it to start with here.
It should be noted that in this window you can also replace the name of your files . Imagine that your photos are already ordered with the name “Holidays” and you want it to put “Summer” instead, because where it says “Format” you should choose “Replace text” and once there in the “Search” field you should put “Vacation” and in “Replace by” write “Summer”. Once this is done, all the files will be renamed.
The latest feature in Discord is the one that lets you add text to your files. Maybe each one has a completely different name and you want it to stay that way, but you want the word “Vacation” to appear on all of them so that you can easily distinguish them. Well, if you select precisely that option to add text, you must write the word you want to add and then choose if you want to insert it before or after the name.
