Tool Tips

by David Coverston

Someone posted a question this week on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to, asking how to rename a group of files. Of course it wasn’t a simple file renaming task; it involved removing letters in the middle of the file name and replacing them with numbers.

So, I fired off an email to the inquirer and told her about the tool I use: Bulk Rename Utility. It works great, and the price can’t be beat: free! 

Let’s get started by going to http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk  and downloading the BRU_Setup_WinNTx86.exe file. This version works with Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2008, 2000, and NT. There’s also a version for 64-bit Windows as well. 
 
You can download a PDF version of the user manual while you are there, although the help file that installs with the application contains the same information. Double-click the file to run the installation routine. Click through the Setup, the License Agreement, the Set Destination Location, and Select Start Menu, dialog boxes.

In the Select Additional Tasks, I recommend choosing the Install Windows Explorer Extension. This adds the Bulk Rename Utility to the Explorer context menu, which is where you probably do most of your file management chores anyway.

Click OK on the Ready to Install dialog box and you are ready to go.

After the installation, you can run the program from the Programs menu, or by right-clicking a file in the Explorer window (assuming you followed my advice and installed the extension).