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Customizing your Preferences

To modify the behavior of Name those Files!, there are several preference settings you can change from the preferences window. To view the preferences window, click the “Preferences” button, select “Preferences...” from the application menu, or use the keyboard hotkey combination Command=;.

By default, NtF! will always display a warning before actually renaming your files. To turn this warning off, disable the “Show Rename! Warning” checkbox.

NtF! allows you to remember the last search and replace routines used to customize the original file name. You can use the preferences to alter the behavior of this search and replace routines to make them persistent through relaunches of the application and how many to remember.

As you modify the settings for the rename parameters, a sample based on the first file in your source folder file list will be created in real time (if no source folder has been chosen, this sample will be based on a generic sample file name). On slower machines, this real time preview may hinder system performance. If this is the case, you can disable the sample preview via the preferences.

When you are using NtF! you can rearrange the column order and widths to get the display that works best for you. These customized settings for the column widths and order will be retained through relaunches of the application. If you would like to reset the widths and order to the default on each launch, disable the “Remember File Table’s Column Size & Position through Relaunches” preference.

If sorting by the name, date, or size is not appropriate to your needs, you can use the preferences to change the file table to use “Manual Reordering” instead of “Automatic Sorting”. When “Manual Reordering” is enabled, clicking on the column headers will no longer sort the file table by that criterion. Instead, to reorder the items in the file table, simply drag and drop the table rows up or down until the sorted list looks as it should. You can now generate your new names and the counters will be applied in the order you have determined.

Sometimes you will have files that are already named appropriately and you do not want NtF! to rename them. However, the other files to be renamed may use a counter that you want to increment based on all items in a folder, not just the ones to be renamed. If you enable the option to “Add Skipped Files to Prefix & Suffix Counters’, then items that are designated to be skipped (the checkbox on the far left column of the corresponding file row) will not be renamed by the counters will be incremented as if those items were also included.

As you rename files, you may want to keep a record of the original item name. By enabling the option to “Add Original Name to the File’s Comments”, the original name will be added to the comments field that is viewable in the “Get Info” box in the Finder. (Mac OS X 10.4’s Spotlight feature also uses this comment field so this can be useful to find a file after you have renamed it.)

Also when renaming files, often it is helpful to organize your files into subfolders. Name those Files! makes this very easy for you to do. If you check the “Sort Files in Date-Named Folders after Renaming” preference and then choose either creation date or modification date as the sort setting and the format of the date, your files will be renamed and then placed into new subfolders in the source folder named for either the creation or modification date as specified. If the folders already exist, the file will be moved into the existing folder. A few notes about this feature. When it is enabled, all files will be placed in subfolders and after the renaming, NtF! will not list any files in the file table for the source folder because it does not scan subfolders. Also, if you would like to utilize the sorting feature but don’t want to actually rename your files, simply use the default rename settings that will not add a prefix or suffix, and will include the original file name and extension without modifications.

You can also use the preferences to see more complete creation and modification dates in the file table, toggle tool tips for the interface elements on and off, and show the status, a text field at the bottom of the window that shows the last action performed by NtF! and the amount of time it took to complete that action.

Copyright © 2004, 2005 Jonathan Nathan. All Rights Reserved.
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No endorsement of or affiliation with any third-party product or service mentioned is implied.