For example, the following command replaces an underscore with a hyphen Dir | Rename-Item –NewName You can use the same command to replace small snippets of a filename, too. The following command renames all file extensions from text documents to rich text format documents: ren *.txt *.rtfīefore swapping out file extensions, I recommend taking a backup of the files just in case something goes wrong. That means you can attempt to rename files to similar file types, such as a Word document (.docx) to a text document (.txt), but you'll run into issues if you attempt to convert a Word document into a video type (such as. While this is handy, it can cause issues if you rename it to an incompatible file type.

That means you can batch rename file extensions. The ren command can also address file extensions.

You can remove the '-budget' suffix using the following command: ren ?-budget.xlsx ?.xlsx Say you have a series of documents named 'jan-budget.xlsx,' 'feb-budget.xlsx,' 'mar-budget.xlsx,' and so on. You can use batch file renaming to delete part of a filename, too. If you want to add a prefix, move the '-test' part of the command to the front, like so: ren *.* test-?.* The second part (with all the question marks) tells the command to use the existing file names up to seven characters, but add '-test' as a suffix, while the asterisk again means apply to any file extension. So, '*.*' means find any file name, with any extension, in this folder. In this command, the asterisk wildcard acts in place of any characters. How about adding a suffix to a group of files? You can do that using the following command: ren *.* ?- test.* Here, the question mark wildcard acts as any character, allowing the command to find any matching files while outputting the renamed files. For example, if you want to change the number of digits in your file names, you can use the following command: ren document?.txt document3?.txt

If you want to rename multiple files, you can use the wildcard characters to make changes. The command to rename a single file is: ren filename.jpg newfilename.jpg Type dir and press Enter to see the list of files. Head to the folder containing the files you wish to rename, hit Shift + Right Click, and select Open a command window here.

Batch rename folders