# Win'98 File Renaming

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-file-renaming/44145>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 5, 2000, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-file-renaming/44145 "2000-12-05T15:34:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![GaryM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garym/32/241_2.png) [@GaryM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaryM)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2000, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-file-renaming/44145/1 "2000-12-05T15:34:48Z")

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I have a digital camera and it names it’s files DSCNxxxx.jpg. I want to rename these files to something that has some meaning to me. I’m looking for a file or program that would allow me to rename a group of files by specifying a set of say 5 or 6 charactors and automatically sequence the remainder. Such as change DSCN0001.jpg through DSCN0099.jpg to NWS00001.jpg etc. No requirement to limit file names to 8+3.

I’m tired of doing one-at-a-time.

Any help would be appreciated.

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**Author:** ![mblackwell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5fc32e/32.png) [@mblackwell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mblackwell)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2000, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-file-renaming/44145/2 "2000-12-05T15:49:21Z")

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I haven,t tried [this program](http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10096-100-898372.html?tag=st.dl.10001-103-1.lst-7-4.898372) myself, but it looks like it was designed to do exactly what you are describing.

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**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2000, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-file-renaming/44145/3 "2000-12-05T15:52:23Z")

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From a DOS prompt you can do it with the REN command. To accomplish your example, use:

REN DSCN\*.jpg NWS0\*.jpg

This would rename all files that start with DSCN, keeping intact the characters that are replaced by the asterisks. The reason that I added the “0” to the new name is because you had an extra one in your example. It could just have easily said NWS\*.jpg. The only difference is the file name would have been 7 characters (nothing wrong with that).

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**Author:** ![GaryM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garym/32/241_2.png) [@GaryM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaryM)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2000, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-file-renaming/44145/4 "2000-12-05T17:25:07Z")

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Thanks for the help.

**DMC**  
I had not used DOS for some time and had forgotten about renaming with wildcards.

**mblackwell**  
I tried the program and it seems to work although I get error codes.

A search in Yahoo for “file renaming” provided [http://www.freewarehome.com/utilities/rename.html](http://www.freewarehome.com/utilities/rename.html) which offers many to choose from. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that at first!

Thanks