Bulk Rename Utility Review and Tutorial

Hi,

Maybe you recognize the situation that you need to change a lot of file names.

For example, you have a blog a website an e-commerce store a Shopify store and you are uploading lots of images.

You know already for SEO purposes that you would need to change the file name. Because not only the alt text is important but also the file name itself. 

Or you take lots of pictures with your android or iPhone and you end up with a bunch of files in a folder with non-descriptive names. Like DCIM and then the date and the time.

So, if you want to change those in bulk, how do you go about it?

Well, my name is Olaf and today I’m going to show you exactly that.

00:48 Why did I need a file renamer?

So, why did I need this? Well, I have those websites in sneaker comparison and in the beginning, I uploaded all those images manually. 

So, I needed something to batch rename files. Because if you do this like 500 times a week, it really starts getting a bit annoying. You need a tool and I started my quest online to see what I could find and for my Windows 10 machine.

I found this Bulk Rename Utility that is free and does the work perfectly in a matter of seconds. So, this is what I’m going to show you in just a couple of minutes.

What are the use cases?

For this tool well almost everything. In the way that if you need to change the name of something that could be:

• an image
• a Word document
• anything that has a name

So, in my case it was the SEO purpose. But it could also be in your case that you want to rename your photos. 

Or you want to rename for example all the documents in a particular folder for indexing purposes, so you can retrieve them later on much more easily.

02:01 Benefits of Bulk Rename Utility

What are the benefits?

Well, instead of having to change every file name individually you can use this tool to do this in bulk. And it doesn’t matter if you have 10, 100, or 1,000. 

You just say the things that you want to change, and the tool will do this in a matter of seconds. 

Also, it will help you massively in the department of Google ranking because if you use the right file name, the right alt text and the image is not too large, Google will reward you with good rankings.

So, this is very important if you have lots of images on your website. And in the tool itself you find unlimited options.

Actually, a bit too many if you ask me, but we will see in a couple of minutes what you can use. And I only use a fraction of it and for me, that works fine.

02:56 Bulk Rename Utility Reviews

If you ask people about this tool, they are all enthusiastic. Although you will see in a couple of minutes that the interface is not intuitive at all. And it’s really overwhelming in the beginning. 

But people are so enthusiastic because it is:

• fast
• reliable
• very lightweight
• free 

03:17 Time saved or extra money earned. Bulk Rename Utility Calculator

And last but not least it will save you a lot of time and therefore money depending on what you are doing. 

Now let’s see for ourselves with this calculator that I built into my website. This has three variables. The

• number of files you rename per week
• the time it takes to rename just one file and the
• fee that you charge your clients or the internal rate that you value yourself with

So, let’s go to the tool itself. I open it up, and we’ll see in a matter of seconds how this works. 

I’ll put myself over here for now. The three variables as said, and this is the extra income you could make or the money that you can save per workweek, depending on how you calculate.

I mean if in my case I work for clients as well. So, if I could make two hours more per week by using this bulk rename tool, it would actually earn me a lot of money for free. 

But also, if you just use it to save time you could do some good things with this time. I mean you could:

• do other work
• impress your boss
• have more time for your family, friends and children

04:59 Easy and fast Batch File Renaming. Batch Rename Utility Calculator

If you are working from home for example and you have a fixed job to do, you could just make it a lot easier and faster. So, let’s put it to the test. Let’s assume we have like 30 files we need to rename per week.

Every file takes me two minutes and this is not only the time for renaming because then you say alright two minutes is a lot. But if you have to go to the folder, then change it, check it, you screw up sometimes, you have to change it again…

Well, 2 minutes can be really easy filled. So, let’s start with the two minutes, and your client fee, i.e. the rate that you charge your clients would be 60.

In this case, the extra income or the saved money per week would be 60 already. Which would translate into 2,400 per year with a 40-work week year. 

But also, if you would take it down a notch. I would say okay it’s only 10 files per week and I only need one minute to change a file. And my client rate is thirty dollars still it would be two hundred dollars on a yearly basis. 

If we crank this up to maybe 120 dollars per hour that you’re worth, or you charge your clients. And you have like 100 files that you have to rename because you are running a web shop or a Shopify store. Then this could easily be 200 per workweek.

So, it depends a lot on those variables where you will be on this scale. But in general, it will save you a lot of money, especially if you are uploading and editing a lot of images, of course.

06:58 Demo Bulk Rename Utility

So, let’s go back and go to the proof of the pudding. Because that is always in the eating as we say. So, let’s go to a folder that I prepared for this and here it is so in this case. 

I have those sneakers and this one is one of those non-descriptive file names. So, if I would upload this Google would not know what I mean.

It would not know what is in the file or on the image. So, I would like to change this for example these sneakers would be in the top 10 of women’s sneakers in blue. And if I’m going to write a blog about this, I would like to upload those images and those images would have to have the same file name.

So, what do I do… I right-click and go to the build rename tool. So, I’m going to rename this, it will open up the screen and what you see here is a little bit scary in the beginning here below. But I will talk you through it in just a second. So, let’s save these, and I just select them as the files that I want to change.

And here in the column, you see the name and here you will see the new name. What I use in general is just a couple of options. 

For example: in this one file, I just say remove the whole name. And then add something so in this case, I could say top 10 women’s sneakers blue. And I have this numbering over here and I would like to have that numbering at the end.

08:56 Options Batch File Renamer

In this case, I could change all those names in one go to the top 10 women’s sneakers in blue. And if I would click rename this would be done. So, here you can see. But what we could also do is, and I’m going to go to the tool again, is to say okay, but I don’t want sneakers because I’m in England for example. I want to replace sneakers with trainers and then I would rename those. 

And again, as you can see, it now has changed to trainers. And with the tool, you can do a lot as I already explained. For example, you can do regex if you are tech-savvy, you can do all kinds of stuff here like Append, Auto-date, too many options to mention.

But let’s take the other use case that I use it for sometimes and just select those dates and times and let’s assume that I want to keep the date but not the time. So, then I go into the remove section. Section number five.

08:56 More Options Advanced Renamer

It’s all sections as you can see. So remove the last characters and I’m going to remove them until there. So, I keep the date and I would just add something. Number seven the add-department and I would say a long weekend New York 2020. 

And then I need to give it a number at the end. Because otherwise, those three at the top for example would be the same. So, then I would say all right I will give them a number and I start them by one. 

But you could also start at two or three or four or whatever if you have already a couple of those in the system. And you rename them. And here you can see it will be changed immediately in your file system.

So, there you go. This is how the tool works and I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you in the next video.

Thanks for watching!

Good luck 🍀🙏
Olaf the ToolFinderr