How do I find and replace a character in filenames in Windows 7 using Explorer?

Question

I want to replace all the underscore characters (_) with a space () in a filename.

How can I do this quickly, when I have lots of _ characters to replace?

Answer 1

vbScript should do it for you. Create a file called "rename_underscores.vbs" containing the following.

Set objFso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set Folder = objFSO.GetFolder("c:\test\")

For Each File In Folder.Files
    sNewFile = File.Name
    sNewFile = Replace(sNewFile,"_"," ")
    if (sNewFile<>File.Name) then 
        File.Move(File.ParentFolder+"\"+sNewFile)
    end if

Next

Make sure the folder name is correct. (In the example, I've used c:\test) And then double click your file to do the renaming.

Answer 2

Edit: In Windows 10 and 11, it's now possible to do this (and much more) directly in Explorer using the PowerRename extension from Microsoft's free PowerToys package. PowerToys has lots of other great extensions, too. Unfortunately, it's not available for Windows 7--but perhaps you've upgraded your OS since 2010? ;-)

---

As others have mentioned, there is no way to do exactly what you want without using a script or batch file. For instance, in PowerShell you can do what you want quite easily:

cd "C:\Users\MyName\Documents\MyDirectory"

# by default, -replace is case-insensitive (equivalent to -ireplace)
# for case-sensitive, use -creplace
Dir | Rename-Item –NewName { $_.name –replace "_"," " }

Just be sure to replace "C:\Users\MyName\Documents\MyDirectory" with the path to your directory.

For more detail and other options, including some things you can do using just Explorer, see here: http://www.howtogeek.com/111859/how-to-batch-rename-files-in-windows-4-ways-to-rename-multiple-files/

Answer 3

I recommend using a 3rd party tool like Bulk Rename Utility. It's free and it has an installer less than 1 MB.

Answer 4

This is within the realms of a dos bat file. Create a bat file (New->Text file, rename extension to .bat) then copy the blue sections below into it.

I'll split it into sections and explain what it's doing.

---

Print the current state of the directory for comparison later

dir /b

List the files in the directory, then for all the ones that contain an underscore and end in .txt, call ProcessFile on them.

for %%f in (*_*.txt) do call :ProcessFile "%%f"
goto :finished

The syntax "str=%str:x=y%" replaces instances of x with y. In this case, we're replacing "_" with nothing

:ProcessFile
set str=%1
rename %1 %str:_=%
goto :eof

That's it!

Now it just prints what was changed so we can confirm it's working as expected;

:finished
echo ----
dir /b

Results (Not part of the bat file)

baz_ing.txt
big_rawr.foo
foo_bar.txt
multiple_underscores_test.txt
----
bazing.txt
big_rawr.foo
foobar.txt
multipleunderscorestest.txt

Answer 5

Here is my batch rename ruby script. I haven't used other batch renaming tools but I think my script is very easy to use and very versatile. Here is the command for your case:

ruby bren.rb *_* "_/ "

I have setup my windows environment in such a way bren.rb can be executed as an executable from any directory.

Answer 6

Windows-based renaming tool, the most powerful there is, and it's free. http://www3.telus.net/pfrank/

Answer 7

This doesn't explicitly answer the question ('.. in Explorer'), but I found the most useful software to do this was Adobe Bridge (Free)

1. Select all files in Bridge
2. Right click > Batch Rename

Added bonus: Supports Regex!