Imagine returning from a vacation and importing 100 photos from your digital camera onto your computer. By default, the camera will assign them completely unhelpful, robotic names like IMG_8492.JPG and IMG_8493.JPG. If you want to organize them into an album, you need descriptive names. Right-clicking and renaming 100 files one by one would take hours. Fortunately, Windows 11 includes a hidden “batch rename” feature built directly into File Explorer that handles the entire process in three seconds.
How to Batch Rename Using File Explorer
You do not need to download third-party software to perform a basic batch rename.
- Open File Explorer and navigate to the folder containing the files you want to rename.
- Select all the files you want to change. You can click and drag a box around them with your mouse, or press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select every file in the folder simultaneously.
- With all the files highlighted, right-click on the very first file in the group.
- Click the Rename icon (it looks like a rectangle with a cursor inside it) or simply press the F2 key on your keyboard.
- The name of that first file will become highlighted in blue, ready for you to type. Type your new base name (for example, type Hawaii_Vacation).
- Press Enter.
How Windows Handles the Numbering
The instant you press Enter, Windows will instantly rename every single highlighted file in the folder. To prevent the files from having the exact same name (which is impossible in Windows), the operating system will automatically append sequential numbers in parentheses.
Your messy files will instantly transform into a perfectly organized list:
Hawaii_Vacation (1).JPGHawaii_Vacation (2).JPGHawaii_Vacation (3).JPG
If you make a typo and accidentally rename 100 files incorrectly, do not panic. Simply press Ctrl + Z (Undo) immediately, and Windows will revert all 100 files back to their original IMG camera names.