renaming multiple files in Windows 10, is this possible?

[Raffie77]

Helo,

I use Exiftool on my mac because I want to rename my photos, and it works great!
My wife has a Windows 10 Laptop so I want to use Exiftool on Windows to.

Let's say I have a folder that contains 50 photos and I want to rename 10 of them.
On my mac I type in the command line:

Code Select Expand

exiftool -d "%Y-%m-%d %H,%M,%S%%-c" '-filename<${DateTimeOriginal} $Make-$Model Animal Swan.%e'
in Finder I select the 10 files and I drag those files to my terminal window, and hit enter and BAM! it works, because MAC OS Does understand that you can drag multiple files in a terminal window.

Back to my Windows laptop: Windows doesn't understand that I have 10 files selected that he needs to paste those 10 files in the command window (like MAC does),
instead of that Windows paste just 1 file.

is there a solution for this?

[Phil Harvey]

I didn't even know this about Windows, but perhaps PowerShell handles multiple files differently?  Have you tried PowerShell instead of cmd.exe?

- Phil

[Raffie77]

I didn't even know this about Windows, but perhaps PowerShell handles multiple files differently?  Have you tried PowerShell instead of cmd.exe?

- Phil

I never heard of powershell,
I'll take a closer look at this.

thanks Phill

[Raffie77]

I tested it with power shell and it didn't support dragging multiple files.

I found a program that renames files using exiftool, it's called Advanced Renamer.
Works like a charm and I can drag and drop multiple files.

That solves sort of my problem.


Ralph

[Stephen Marsh]

Hi Ralph, there are differences between Mac and Windows, this is one of them.

That being said, a nice feature of Windows is that you can create a shortcut to exiftool, get properties and then hard code arguments into the shortcut's "target" field treating it like a command line. You can then drag and drop multiple files and they should then be processed. Attached is an example .png image using -k and -description however the commands could be anything.

The exiftool.exe program file can also be renamed to use simple commands that do not use illegal file system characters, however I prefer the shortcut/target method as it is more flexible. You can rename the shortcut, change it's icon and preset the target field to easily create a stand alone drag-n-drop "program" which takes a little more work on the Mac using Apple Automator:

http://prepression.blogspot.com/2016/12/automator-diy-exiftool-gui-services.html



PH Edit: Make attached image viewable in post

[scotthd]

I am new to this.  Am trying to use the shortcut as above, however, no matter what command I type into the "Target" I always get an error.  I can not figure out what I am doing wrong.  Any Suggestion?

[Stephen Marsh]

Unlike when using a command line, the target has to point to exiftool.exe and not just exiftool

Here is an example, ExifTool is installed in:

C:\Windows\exiftool.exe

While the target is:

C:\Windows\exiftool.exe -ext "*" "-filename<%f.$fileTypeExtension"

(This example command adds a filename extension to files that do not contain one)

[scotthd]

After 3 hrs trying to figure it out....so simple with your explanation.

Thank you!!!