PSRenamer Help

PSRenamer is a tool for renaming a group of files. The files to be renamed must all reside in the top level of an existing folder.

PSRenamer is written in Java, and requires the presence of a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) or Java Runtime Environment (JRE), of version 1.3.1 or greater. You may wish to visit www.Java.com to download this required software, if it is not already present on your machine.

The following controls are available on the program's main screen.

Set Folder button

Pressing this button will produce a dialog box allowing you to select the folder containing the files to be renamed. The folder you select here will then appear in the Folder Path text box below. The same dialog box can be invoked using the File/Open menu item.

Preview button

Pressing this button will produce a preview of the files to be renamed in the Details window below, based on the criteria you have entered. Note that pressing this button before entering any criteria will produce a list of all the files in the selected directory.

Rename button

Pressing this button will actually rename the selected files according to the criteria you have specified. All the details of the renaming activity will be listed in the Details window below.

Undo button

If, immediately after pressing the Rename button, a review of the Details window reveals that you have done something other than what you intended, pressing this button will cause the file names to revert to their previous values.

Folder Path

This indicates the folder containing the files you wish to rename. This will initially default to the folder containing the PSRenamer program. You may type or paste a path directly into this field. You may also set it using the Set Folder button above.

Find

Note that there are four occurrences of this field and the next four. You may use any or all of these rows, depending on the complexity of the operation you wish to perform.

Enter a value in the Find column to indicate the text value you wish to replace, or simply a value you wish to use as part of your selection criteria, if no Action is specified. If the Where field for this row is set to Equals, then an asterisk in this column will cause all file names to be selected.

Case

Check this box if you wish the Find value to be compared to your file names in a case-sensitive manner. Leaving this box unchecked will ignore differences in capitalization of letters.

Where

Select the location in the file names where you want the preceding Find value to be located. This can have one of five values. Note that each row initially defaults to a different one of these values. You may use as many of these as you like, and may change any of the rows to different values in this column. The allowable values are as follows.

Begins With
The Find value will only be located if it is at the very beginning of a file name.
Contains
The Find value will be located anywhere within a file name (but not within the file extension).
Ends With
The Find value will only be located if it is at the very end of a file name, but prior to the file extension.
Equals
The Find value will only be located if it is equal to the entire file name, ignoring the file extension and the period preceding the file extension. If this value is selected, then an asterisk in the Find column will match any and all file names.
File Extension
The Find value will only be located if it is a complete file extension.

New Value

This is the new value you wish to have replace the Find value. The exact case (upper/lower) of this text will be used as you enter it.

Note that if you replace the entire file names for a group of files with a constant value, then this program will treat the new file name (preceding the extension) as a starting value for the first file, and will then increment that value by 1 for each succeeding file, so long as the file name ends with a digit or a letter. Note that, for this feature to work, all files selected must have the same extension.

Action

Select the action you wish to have performed. This can have one of the following values.

Replace
The New value will replace the Find value.
Replace Chars
When used in conjunction with the Contains option, the characters in the New Value string will replace the characters in corresponding positions of the Find string. The character 'b' in the Find string will be interpreted as a blank (aka space). The caret character ('^') in the New Value string will cause any occurrences of the corresponding character in the Find string to be removed, with no replacement character.
Insert Before
The New value will be inserted just before the Find value.
Insert After
The New value will be inserted just after the Find value.
Do Nothing
The Find value will be used to select file names to be acted upon, but no change will be made to or around this Find value.

Details

The results of pressing the Preview, Rename or Undo buttons will be shown here.