To turn on the script menu go into your Application folder > AppleScript > AppleScript Utility. Select the check box for Show Script Menu in menu bar. You should now see the script menu in your menu bar.
Now that you have your script menu installed, you will have easy access to the Finder Scripts that we will use in the next example.
If you deal with a large number of files that you need to rename on a regular basis, you are going to love this tip. We will use a standard AppleScript called “Replace Text in Item Names”. Basically it will take a group of files or folders and perform a find and replace on their names. While there may be a million different reasons to use this script, a common one, and one that I deal with a lot, is to rename a series of screen grabs.
- Find the location of the files or folders that you want to rename.
- Go to the script menu and into Finder Scripts.
- Select “Replace Text in Item Names”.
- You will be prompted to select File Name or Folder Name. Select which ever you would like to change.
- Enter the text that you would like to replace.
- Enter the new text.
- You will receive a confirmation notice. Select Ok, and you are done.
Make sure to take a look at the other Finder scripts, as you may also have a use for them.
Loading ...
You have nice How-To articles, so I would like to know if you would be interested in joining the MadMac team. Please reply to me by email.
Thanks, just changed from PC to Mac and changing file and folder names was driving me insane!
Thanks!
Your tip was very useful!
Happy New Year!
Even happier since I found your site. Yep, same here, had to move across to a different platform and needed to change 8,597 file names to do it. Applescript did it with 3 key strokes! Thank you so much.
Sugoi!
…nice tip but cannot do recursively
. Thank you.
This is GREAT! But how can I use the TRIM FILE NAMES script to remove ANYTHING beyond a certain character count?
We have file names like:
12345 blah blah blah
23457 blah blahhha blahh
We want to keep the first 5 digits, but remove everything past this.
Is there a wildcard we can use?
Can this be modified to search within sub-folders?
THANKS!
This is a huge timesaver!
However, is there anyway to apply it to subfolders?
Or after searching for specific items applying it to all found items?
We are cleaning up our server and need to remove all unusual/punchtuations characters such as &#$! etc…
Thanks!
Thanks – a great tip.
I could not get this to work, but did figure out that simply selecting the file and hitting the Enter key immediately makes the file name editable……
Thanks for this tip. How do you confine the file name changes to files in just one particular folder? I had the folder whose file names I wanted changed open in Finder, but the script also changed the name of a file I had just sitting on my desktop.
There is program called GraphicConverter at Lemkesoft.com. It’s primarily a graphics program but it has a very powerful renaming function under it’s Convert and Modify menu. You can download a free trial from the website. It does subfolders and it will let you trim the end or beginning of file names. The free version is fully funcional you just have to wait 10 seconds every time it starts up.
Hi,
I can’t find finder scripts under the scripts menu. In fact when I open finder scripts folder there isn’t any item in it. I use an imac 10.6.4
Any help please?