Rename Files with PowerShell

Rename Single File with PowerShell

Using Rename-Item with/without the -Path Parameter

Use the Rename-Item cmdlet to rename a file in PowerShell.

Rename-Item "test.txt" -NewName "newtest.txt"

We used the Rename-Item cmdlet to rename the test.txt file to the newtest.txt file. Note that this command will look for the file in the current directory. If you want to search for a file from a different directory and rename it, then the following solution is for you.

Rename-Item -Path "C:\testnew.docx" -NewName "find.txt"

Here, You must provide the file’s path using the -Path parameter. For instance, the command provided above will rename a file that resides at C:\ , don’t forget to add the file’s name in the path, for instance, C:\testnew.docx.

Note: The above command will also update the file’s extension from .docx to .txt.

Using Rename-Item with -Confirm Parameter

Use the Rename-Item cmdlet with the -Confirm parameter to prompt the user before renaming the file.

Rename-Item -Path "D:\find.txt" -NewName "testnew.txt" -Confirm

Here, we used the -Confirm parameter name to prompt the user whether s/he wants to rename the file. So, for example, the above command changes the name of the file "D:find.txt" to "testnew.txt" if and only if the user responds yes to the following prompt.

Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Performing the operation "Rename File" on target "Item: E:\Test\File3.txt Destination: E:\Test\testnew.txt".
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"):

Using Rename-Item with -Passthru Parameter

Use the Rename-Item cmdlet with the -Passthru parameter to display data about the newly renamed file on the PowerShell console.

Rename-Item -Path "D:testnew.txt" -NewName "find.txt" -Passthru

    Directory: D:\

Mode            LastWriteTime               Length Name
----                 -------------                            ------ ----
-a----             12/28/2022  11:33 PM     0 testnew.txt

PowerShell returned the output to the console for the above command when we used the -Passthru parameter. It is most commonly used to ensure that the cmdlet does what we designed.

Rename multiple files in PowerShell

Use Rename-Item with Get-ChildItem cmdlet to rename multiple files.

Let’s say you want to change extension of all .txt files to .log files.

You can do it as following:

Get-ChildItem *.txt| Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.txt','.log' }

Get-ChildItem *.txt will retrieve all the txt files in the folder and pipe it to the Rename-Item cmdlet. Rename-Item cmdlet will change extension of each .txt file to .log.

Please note that we have used \ to escape . over here as -replace operator takes regex as input to search the String and . has special meaning in regex.

If you have extensions like .txt.txt by any chance, you can use following command.

Get-ChildItem *.txt| Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.txt$','.log' }

-replace operator is used to replace String with new String.

Replace operator takes two arguments:

• substring to find in given string : \.txt
• replacement String for found String: .log.

In case you want to replace text, you can go through how to replace String in multiple files in PowerShell.

Further reading:

Show hidden files with PowerShell

Read more →

Read File line by line in PowerShell

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That’s all about how to rename files in PowerShell.