Sorting many files by hand and renaming them individually is tedious work. Special software does this quickly with a few simple steps.

(Image: Rudolf A. Blaha)

Renaming files: Five batch renamers for Windows in comparison Functional flood Conflict solver One-to-one meetings Conclusion Test table Article in c’t 23/2020 read Like hinderli ch: There is a mountain of files on the hard drive that no one has ever bothered to name properly. Most of the time something like this affects music, photos or documents. In order not only to get an overview, but also to keep it, it is essential to give the files meaningful names: “Summer 2018 Oslo Old Town 43. jpg “sounds easier to understand than” IMG _ 20180921 _ 134842. jpg “. Because the whole thing quickly degenerates into dreary occupational therapy with more than ten or twenty files, there are batch renamers: programs that rename files in batches according to a freely selectable pattern.

We were interested in what these programs are good for – and whether paid software has advantages over free versions. For our test, we selected five tools that offer a German-language program interface. In addition to the free tools Ant Renamer from Antoine Potten and Flexible Renamer from Naru, these are the very feature-rich Advanced Renamer from Kim Jensen, Multi File Renamer from EFSoftware and File Renamer 6 from 1-abc.net.

The selection is not to be understood as final, but represents an editorial selection. If an English-language interface is not a problem, candidates such as Bulk Rename Utility, File Renamer Turbo or Rename Master can also be considered; Microsoft’s PowerToys also contains a very simple renaming function, which is particularly suitable for searching and replacing.

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