Windows Tip: Rename Multiple Files with One Click

Picture this: You've dumped all those arcanely named photos from your camera to your PC. But rather than leave them with names like IMG0484.jpg, you'd like them to have descriptive titles like VacationToParis1.jpg. Sounds good, but manually renaming files in Windows one at a time is a massive pain in the backside.

Here's the easy way to rename files in bulk!

In Windows Explorer (or your My Documents folder, or wherever the files are located), select the files you want to rename. You can do this by clicking and dragging a box around them, or select them individually by holding down the Ctrl button and clicking individual files.

Once all the files you want to rename are highlighted, press F2, or right-click on one of the files and select Rename. All of your file selections will disappear except for one, but don't panic: Type in your new name and click Enter. That's it! One file will be now be named "renametext" and the others will have sequential numbers in the format of "renametext (1)" and "renametext (2)" and so on. File extentions like .gif, .jpg, or .doc will all be intact, so you can rename multiple types of files at once even if the formats aren't the same.