Help Changing Multiple File Names at Once in "Finder"

[Rikkitikkitavi]

I am new to Mac and having difficulty changing names in Finder.

I know that I can select the file and go to "Get Info" and change the name under "Name and Extention". However with hundreds of photos, how can I change the name of multiple photos at once and just assign a different number after the identical name?

I ask because when I take digital photos, the camera assigns the same name to them: i.e., dsc_00007.jpg. When I try to download my pictures to a memory card for use in a digital frame, it will not download many of them because they have the same name and wants to replace it.

I need to rename them under "Finder" so that I can download ALL the pics without the system thinking that they are duplicates.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[banjomamo]

try something like this renamer app. you may also be able to accomplish something similar with automator.

http://www.power4mac.com/renamer/

 

[Mal]

That, or you could just use iPhoto. It'll take care of that problem nicely. But yeah, if you insist on renaming them yourself, the app mentioned in the previous post should do the trick.

jW

 

[GimmeSlack12]

You can easily do this in an Automator workflow built-in to OS X. Open Automator and do this:
Finder: Get Selected Finder Items
Finder: Rename Finder items

Save As: Finder Plug-In.

Ok, now go to the Finder and select all the files you want to rename, right click or control click and find your Workflow in the contextual menu. Its all pretty easy.

 

[solvs]

Automater is great for that, as is Graphic Converter. But Automater is free and as said above, you can save the workflow for later use. I did want to point out though that you don't have to go into Get Info to change individual names. You can just click on the name on the item to change it. One click to select, two to highlight the name, and once more to get the blinking indicator.

 

[TheAnswer]

I'd use Automator and run several of the Rename Finder Items filters:

1) Replace Text "dsc_00" with "Photo "
2) Add Date (in any format you choose)

Then photo "dsc_00007.jpg" becomes "Photo 007 6/16/2007" that should keep you from having any duplicates and also build in a photo # and date into each photo.

 

[Homer2556]

After playing with automator for a few minutes, there doesn't seem to be a way of removing text from a file name. Is this the case, or would you have to write an Applescript to do this?

edit: nevermind. I figured it out, I just have to leave the "replace" box empty.

 

[TheAnswer]

Glad you figured it out.

 

[Rikkitikkitavi]

That, or you could just use iPhoto. It'll take care of that problem nicely. But yeah, if you insist on renaming them yourself, the app mentioned in the previous post should do the trick.

jW

I've tried this and it does not work. Am I doing something wrong. I used the "renamer" application that Banjomamo recommended and all of a sudden my photos are DISAPPEARING out of iPhoto.

I have started up an album in iPhoto and moved photos there to place on an SD disc and they will not let me copy them to the disc because DSCxxxx.jpg is currently busy.

I'm very confused and know I have all these missing files in iPhoto. I went into Finder and found them in the harddrive. Now how do I get tme back into iPhoto?

I was thinking of going to Finder - Pictures - and coping all of them to external hard drive, going into iPhoto and deleting all photos and then xfering back from harddrive to mac and letting iPhoto pick them up again.

ANY HELP???? PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!


(I have never felt to bad...I went to view pics in iPhoto and they appeared across the top but when I clicked on them to enlarge/edit them the screen was blank and had a grey box with dashes around it. I closed and then the thumbnail was white. I about cried becuase they are pictures of my daughters birth. Luckily I did find them in Finder - Pictures as I stated earlier.)

 

[dalbanese]

Make Sequential with New Name

This is wonderful. I was unaware of the Automator features before this and am now most pleased.

However, I have a question.

I can now Rename from a Plug-in in Finder (note: to make a new name for a group of items, you must choose "Make Sequential" and select "new name" and go into "Options" at the bottom of the "Rename Finder Items" task box and select "Show this action when the workflow runs").

However, it throws the pictures out of order, randomly assigning 1 to X. Why doesn't it just number them in the order that they are stored in Finder automatically? That is also the order they were created. This seems counter-intuitive, and I know enough about Macs to know that I don't know that much; when I run into something that doesn't make sense, it's because I don't understand what I'm doing.

So...How do I create a rename workflow that sequences pictures with a new name without disrupting their chronological order?

Thanks a million!

 

[notjustjay]

All of the responses in answer to your original question are great, and I hope they work out.

However, I think you're addressing the wrong problem, which is that your digital camera is restarting its count every time you use it. This is a configurable setting in most digital cameras, look for a menu entry called "Reset Numbering" or similar (turn it off).

This way your camera will start taking photos at DSC_0000.JPG and will keep going all the way up to DSC_9999.JPG before it finally resets itself. Until that happens, there will be no duplicate filenames.

 

[ineyjoe]

Thanks so much!

http://www.manytricks.com/namemangler/

This works GREAT!
It has the ability to append to beginning or end of filename, find and replace, and all sorts of stuff. It even lets you highlight the files in finder and then open the software and select the files that are highlighted.

Tip: For faster searching, disable the feature for looking in folders when you don't need it. It bogs it down even when there are no subfolders for it to look in.

Thanks again!

 

[ChrisA]

I am new to Mac and having difficulty changing names in Finder.

I know that I can select the file and go to "Get Info" and change the name under "Name and Extention". However with hundreds of photos, how can I change the name of multiple photos at once and just assign a different number after the identical name?

I ask because when I take digital photos, the camera assigns the same name to them: i.e., dsc_00007.jpg. When I try to download my pictures to a memory card for use in a digital frame, it will not download many of them because they have the same name and wants to replace it.

I need to rename them under "Finder" so that I can download ALL the pics without the system thinking that they are duplicates.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

First off, I bet your camera has a setting so that it will not keep resetting the file numbers to zero. Look for that. It will still wrap back to zero after 100,000 frames but the camera may not last long enough.

Second you should be using iPhoto or some other image management software that mostly hides the file names from you. There is not reason to deal with JPG file names. iPhoto (and other software) allows you to specify a rule for naming exported files.

You don't need to do the "get info" for rename in finder, Just select the name i the finder winder and over type it.

But even overtyping, while three times faster than using the info pannel is still slow. I'm sure there are third party apps for mass changes but I hjust use the terminal window and run the "mv" inside a foreach loop. It's likely quicker then even the launch time for any rename app.

I'd suggest both changing the camera setting and a move to iPhoto.

 

[BlueRevolution]

You know you're responding to a post from 2007, right?

 

[notjustjay]

You know you're responding to a post from 2007, right?

Ouch, I didn't even realize that when I posted my response in February of 2009.

Well, I hope the OP figured it out.

 

[BlueRevolution]

I always check dates when I see a long thread I don't recognize. I check the forums often enough that threads don't have time to grow without my notice... unless they're "I'm going back to Windows" or "My Mac has a virus". ;D

 

[aliris]

Mass-change of filenames in terminal

...

But even overtyping, while three times faster than using the info pannel is still slow. I'm sure there are third party apps for mass changes but I hjust use the terminal window and run the "mv" inside a foreach loop. It's likely quicker then even the launch time for any rename app.

Hi -- true, this OP was from years ago, but the issue persists for others, so I appreciate the delayed response! And I'm wondering whether you would be willing to elaborate more precisely (make that *very* precisely, please) as to how you would script this. And also how you would run the script. I've been trying for days to bootstrap an understanding of linux and bash to do just this ... but with little success. Maybe I'm too old to learn this new/old trick. But I just can't seem to figure out this line-scripting.

Thanks for an explicit tutorial if you're willing...

 

[ChrisA]

Hi -- true, this OP was from years ago, but the issue persists for others, so I appreciate the delayed response! And I'm wondering whether you would be willing to elaborate more precisely (make that *very* precisely, please) as to how you would script this. And also how you would run the script. I've been trying for days to bootstrap an understanding of linux and bash to do just this ... but with little success. Maybe I'm too old to learn this new/old trick. But I just can't seem to figure out this line-scripting.

Thanks for an explicit tutorial if you're willing...

Hey, us old folks should be good with scripts. I used computers for 15 years before I saw my first mouse.

Inside termal type but without the quotes "man mv"
and you will get the manual page for the mv or move command. The man pages are written in a very stylized way and you need to read a few to understand the pattern. Start with "mv" and "cp". Look where it says "see also" and look those up. Later try "man bash" and take an hour or two and read it. Try "man man" too.

The shell is a simple program. You type a command and it runs a program by that name, when it finished it prompts fro the next. It also allows for many typing shortcuts and

One command is "for" it will run a bunch of other commands many times.

I can't write a book here. Just get used to the man pages and then Google some sh, bash and csh tutorials.

This is an OLD thread. Best I think to ask new question in a new thread and be specific and people will give good answers

 

[Mal]

Hi -- true, this OP was from years ago, but the issue persists for others, so I appreciate the delayed response! And I'm wondering whether you would be willing to elaborate more precisely (make that *very* precisely, please) as to how you would script this. And also how you would run the script. I've been trying for days to bootstrap an understanding of linux and bash to do just this ... but with little success. Maybe I'm too old to learn this new/old trick. But I just can't seem to figure out this line-scripting.

Thanks for an explicit tutorial if you're willing...

You can probably save yourself the scripting and take a look at A Better Finder Rename. I've used it quite a bit, it does almost any type of batch renaming you could want, and gives you a preview before you tell it to start changing things so you know if you've configured it correctly. Definitely worth a shot.

jW

 

[aliris]

Hey, us old folks should be good with scripts. I used computers for 15 years before I saw my first mouse.

Inside termal type but without the quotes "man mv"
and you will get the manual page for the mv or move command. The man pages are written in a very stylized way and you need to read a few to understand the pattern. Start with "mv" and "cp". Look where it says "see also" and look those up. Later try "man bash" and take an hour or two and read it. Try "man man" too.

The shell is a simple program. You type a command and it runs a program by that name, when it finished it prompts fro the next. It also allows for many typing shortcuts and

One command is "for" it will run a bunch of other commands many times.

I can't write a book here. Just get used to the man pages and then Google some sh, bash and csh tutorials.

This is an OLD thread. Best I think to ask new question in a new thread and be specific and people will give good answers

Thanks, ChrisA...

 

[coopdevillan]

please help

You can easily do this in an Automator workflow built-in to OS X. Open Automator and do this:
Finder: Get Selected Finder Items
Finder: Rename Finder items

Save As: Finder Plug-In.

Ok, now go to the Finder and select all the files you want to rename, right click or control click and find your Workflow in the contextual menu. Its all pretty easy.

Hello. Im trying to get this workflow to work to re-name pictures for me but I cant get it to work for the life of me ?????

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Hello. Im trying to get this workflow to work to re-name pictures for me but I cant get it to work for the life of me ?????

This has changed a bit since 2007 (when I first posted that). Now you want to create a new "Service", then choose and drag "Get Selected Finder Items" into your workflow and then "Rename Finder Items". On the "Rename..." item click the 'options' at the bottom and hit "Show this action...". That's it, save it.

To use the workflow go into the Finder select several files and right-click, at the very bottom you should see the workflow "Batch rename" or whatever you saved the workflow.