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Getting Started

To get started, you need to choose a source folder containing the files you want to rename. To choose a source folder, do any of the following things: press the “Choose Source Folder” button; drop the folder in the source folder path field; drop the folder on the NtF! icon in the Finder or the Dock; or press Command-O (NtF! is all about flexibility). When a source folder is chosen, the files of the folder will be listed in the file table sorted by name.

By default, only files in the first level of the source folder will be listed. Subfolders and the files in subfolders will not be listed. If you would like to include files located in subfolders, make sure that the option to “List Subfolders” is checked. By checking this option, any subfolders found in the main source folder will be search for files. You can further filter the files included in the file list by choosing a filter from the filter drop down menu (such as “Images Only”) or by limiting the files to be included by file type and or extension. To filter by file type or extension, choose the appropriate radio button next to “File Types” and then enter file types and or extensions into the appropriate fields. Each file type or extension should be separated by a comma and file types are four character codes such as JPEG or TIFF or, more specifically, for files such as Microsoft Word, the file type is MSWD or a native Adobe Photoshop file type is 8BIM, etc. So, an appropriate file type list would like “JPEG, TIFF, MSWD” (without the quotes, of course) and an appropriate extension list would like “jpg, tif, doc” (again, without the quotes).

If you have chosen to filter the file list by a filter in the drop down menu or by file type or extension, only files that satisfy the requirements of the filter will be included in the file list to be renamed by NtF! If you would like to see all the files but only select the files that meet the filter requirements to be selected for renaming, you can choose “List All & Select Matches” and all files in the source folder will be listed but only files that meet the requirements of the filter will be selected for renaming. If you have chosen a source folder and later would like to filter the results, modify the filter settings and then press the “Refresh” button.

After your file list has been created, you need to set the parameters that determine how the new file names will be generated. You can add text to use as a prefix (added before anything else), include the original name (with any modifications including search and replace, trim, or case conversion), text to use as a suffix, and finally the extension. You can leave the prefix and/or suffix blank to not add anything or you can insert a special variable into either field using the drop-down insert menu to the right of either field. The special variables can be a date (in any of several formats) or a counter that adds an auto-incremented counter to the name. If you choose to include a date in either the prefix or suffix, you can choose for that date to be the current date, the creation, or the modification date of the file to be renamed. Counters can start at any number and can be incremented by any amount you’d like. Further, you can add leading zeros to the counters and specify the minimum number of digits for the counter using the appropriate options in either the prefix or suffix sections.

Once you have the parameters set, you can click the “Generate New Names” button and the new names will be created and added to the main file table. At this point, your original files have not been modified at all. Now you can review the new names, and, if necessary make any modifications to the rename parameters and regenerate the names. You can do this over and over until the names look like you wish them to look. If you want, you can also sort the file names by any of the criteria in the file table and regenerate the names. In this way you could customize your new names to do such things as add a counter prefix to every file name sorted by creation date or number files based on size. Once the new names have been generated, you can also modify each individual new name by modifying it directly in the file table. Note: If you modify the names directly in the table and then regenerate the new names, your modifications will be overwritten with the new name based on the rename parameters. To quickly revert all of the rename settings, you can click the “R” button. If you have added or removed files from your source folder before you have actually renamed the files using NtF!, you can click the “Refresh” button to reload the files in your source folder.

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.

After the new names meet your satisfaction, click the “Rename!” button to actually change the names of your files. Please be aware that there is no undo for this action so be sure you really want to rename the files in question. If you have modified the rename parameters but not regenerated the file names based on the modified settings, the “Rename!” button will not be active. That’s it for the basics but there are more features to NtF! including automatically sorting files into new folders based on the creation or modification dates of the files themselves, using advanced search and replace on the file names, or remembering all of your rename parameters for future use through the Profiles feature. For more information on these features, please see the appropriate help section. To enable informative tool tips for the various interface elements of NtF!, use the preferences to “Show Tool Tips.”

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.