How to batch rename files on Windows (four methods)
Batch rename files on Windows with File Explorer, PowerToys PowerRename, the command line or PowerShell — and which one to pick for the job you have.
Written by the team building Quick File Organizer, folders that organize themselves, by your rules.
You have three hundred files called DSC_0001.JPG and you want them to say something useful. Windows has four different ways to batch rename files and they are not equally good.
Here they are in the order most people should try them.
1. File Explorer — the built-in one
Select the files, press F2, type a name, press Enter. Windows renames every selected file to name (1), name (2), and so on.
That is the entire feature. It is genuinely useful for a batch of holiday photos and useless for anything else.
There is also a padding problem: Explorer produces (1) through (10), which sorts as 1, 10, 2, 3. For anything you will later sort by name, that is a real defect — see the numbering trap below.
2. PowerToys PowerRename — what to actually use
Microsoft PowerToys is a free, official add-on. PowerRename is the part that matters here.
Install it, then right-click any selection of files and choose PowerRename. You get:
- Find and replace across all selected names
- Optional regular expressions, with a live preview
- Case changes
- Numbering with configurable padding
- A preview column showing exactly what each file will be called
That preview is the whole reason to prefer it. You see every result before committing, and conflicts are flagged before they happen.
3. Command Prompt — one job, done fast
ren *.jpeg *.jpg
Changing every extension in a folder is the one thing ren does better than anything else — it is instant and requires nothing installed.
Beyond that it gets unpredictable quickly, because wildcard matching in ren behaves in ways that surprise people. Use it for extensions and stop there.
4. PowerShell — power, and rope
Get-ChildItem *.jpg | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace 'DSC_', 'Holiday_' }
Complete control. Also no preview, no undo, and a genuine ability to destroy a folder if the expression is wrong.
The numbering trap
This catches everyone once.
file1, file2 … file10 sorts as 1, 10, 2, 3, 4 — because names sort character by character, and "1" comes before "2".
The fix is zero padding, decided by your largest number:
| Files | Pad to | Gives |
|---|---|---|
| Under 100 | 2 digits | 01, 02, 99 |
| Under 1000 | 3 digits | 001, 010, 999 |
Pad generously. Going from two digits to three later means renaming everything again.
Before you batch rename files, check this
Copy the folder first
On a batch of any size, work on a copy. Renaming is not undoable, and the cost is a few minutes of disk space.
Check the sort order
Whatever order the files are in is the order the numbering follows. Sort by date taken, not by the meaningless name you are replacing.
Preview, then commit
PowerRename shows results live; PowerShell has
-WhatIf. Use whichever your tool offers, every time.
Needing to batch rename files is usually a symptom
If you are renaming files so you can find them, the underlying problem is often that they are all in one folder with no structure. Names are doing work that folders should be doing.
Part of a wider system for organizing files on Windows.
Renaming fails the same way deleting does when something still has the file open — the file is open in another program covers how to find the process actually holding it. And if the renaming is really an attempt to make files findable, what a file organizer does is worth reading first.