How To Rename Multiple Files or Folders At One Time

If you’ve ever had to rename a bunch of files or folders to be ordered with the same name followed by a number and you did it the hard way, by renaming each file or folder individually, you’ve probably found out that this can be a time consuming task. Rest assured, because there is a much faster way to rename multiple files or folders at once in Windows XP.  Here’s what to do to if you need to rename a group files, such as group of digital photos:

1. Open the folder containing the files you’d like to rename.
2. Now select the files that are to be renamed (press Ctrl-A to select all the files in the folder).
3. Right-click the first selected file and type a name followed by a number in parentheses, for example: Julia’s Baby Shower (1)
4. Press Enter, and you will have just renamed all of the selected files at once, and they will be numbered in sequential order.

If you leave out the number (in parentheses) while renaming the first selected file, the second file will start with (1).  Also you don’t have to start with the number one, for instance if you’d like the numbers to start at 100 and be ordered sequentially, just use (100) instead of (1).

To undo the renaming of files, press Ctrl-Z. However, this will only undo the last ten files that were renamed in the group. You also have to press Ctrl-Z repeatedly to undo each of the last ten files that were renamed.