Then once you have things rolling, you can decide if it makes sense to rename your old files. Initially, don’t worry about those documents you already have scanned. Get your workflow sorted, come up with your naming convention, and go.

The best way (in my opinion) to approach this is to start with your new files coming in. This way you can just play until you are sure that the tool will really perform the changes you intended.I have said over and over that having a naming convention for your files is the biggest thing you can do to be able to find your paperless documents when you need them. Probably, its best feature is that it displays immediately how the configuration would change the selected filenames. The easiest way to learn how it works is by trial and error. The manual is a bit stingy on instructions of how to use this tool. However, the Bulk Rename Utility is also a useful tool if you don't know regular expressions. Regular expressions are so powerful that any kind of renaming you can imagine can be done with them.

The manual of the Bulk Rename Utility contains some useful examples which you can use to get started.īasically, you use regular expressions to tell the Bulk Rename Utility which criteria those filenames that you want to change must match, and you also use them to specify in what way you want to change them. As there are many fields where regular expressions are useful for sysops, it might be worth the time.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way of learning how to work with them. If you want to get the best out of this tool, you have to know how to handle regular expressions.

Bulk rename utility examples