Ken Rename: Freeware Rename Utility

Ken Rename (Version: 1.02) is a rename utility with a good number of features. It presents an immediate preview of renaming results. Choosing files or folders to be renamed can be done either by the buttons or menu near the top, drag and drop or selecting a folder from the explorer tree.

The Macro tab is first and offers a bunch of options and actions to create very flexible renaming rules. The user can use the buttons to include original file name, a counter (by any starting point and increment), date, EXIF and folder name (1st, 2nd or 3rd parent folder) in the renamed files. File filtering is available to include or exclude system, archive, hidden, read only or folders plus the option to include or exclude subfolders and some file types.

The Replace tab offers to replace matching letters in the original with something else, it has regex and match case support. It can save the replace/with combination to a preset to be re-loaded for use later on.

The Change Case tab has options to capitalize, sentence, upper or lower case renamed files. It can be set to include or exclude either the file name or extension when it renames files.

The Remove tab removes letters from file name and can again work on either or both the file name and extension.

The Insert tab adds letter(s) to different positions within the file name or extension.

The Script tab comes with several ready made (VBScript) ones to further customize renaming options. One can add other scripts as well and save them for future use. For example one of the included scripts is “reverse.vbs” to reverse the file name (eg. hello.jpg to olleh.jpg):

Function Rename(strPath, strName, strExt, bIsFolder)

If bIsFolder Then
Rename = strName + strExt
Else
Rename = StrReverse(strName) + strExt
End If

End Function

Code page and Decode work on Unicode and other formats to convert to different encoding and characters. This was not tested for this review.

The Import list tab can import a text or list type file format (lst, txt, ini, wpl, m3u or pls). An existing file list can be loaded and worked on here.

Ken Rename supports Unicode file names and reading ID3 tags, it has some command line support as well. It is available both in a zipped portable and installer.