# Preferences - Rename Templates

Templates are named components used to rename files and/or their containing folders. Every template must be given a unique name. The order of the templates in the list controls the order of the File>Rename menu items. You can choose to always keep the list sorted. If you do not keep the list always sorted, you can drag and drop templates to change the order and you can click on the column header to force alphabetic ascending or descending order.

Templates can be marked as hidden. When a template is hidden it does not appear on rename template menus. This is useful when a template is used in an action but is not intended to be run directly.

To create a new template click the + button.

To remove templates, select one or more templates in the table and click the - button under the rightmost table button.

To duplicate a template, select a single template in the table and click the ❐ button.

To view and/or modify a template, select a single template in the table and click the ✎ button. Double-clicking on a template name will have the same effect.

To export one or more templates so that they can later be imported, select one or more templates in the table and click the ⇒ button. When exporting, if you select a file which already exists and enable the Merge option, the templates will be written to the existing file overwriting any templates which were there already.

You can preview the effects of a template by selecting a single template and one or more files in the main window. If no errors are detected and changes would be made, you will have the option to perform the rename immediately. The results displayed in the Log Viewer are the results of renaming each file without regard to actual folder contents or the effect of renaming multiple files.

The Force Latin-1 option attempts to ensure that every character in the resultant filename and possibly folder name can be represented as a Latin-1 character. It does so by simplifying various quoting characters, removing accents if necessary and as a last resort by changing characters which can not be represented as underscore characters. This is useful when you want to guarantee that a file can be represented in an m3u as opposed to an m3u8 file. Note that character folding is automatically performed when this option is enabled. More information on character folding can be found in Fold Characters Substitutions.

The order of processing for a rename operation is as follows: (note that the list shows the order for all of the options)

1. Build the new file and/or folder names by applying the template to a file's metadata.
2. Case modification and exceptions are processed.
3. The field exception is processed.
4. Replacements are processed.
5. Spaces are changed to underscores.
6. Latin-1 transformations take place.
7. Hard coded replacements, (currently only : and /) are replaced with the invalid character sequence.
8. Folders are renamed with the same rules as above. All open files in the renamed folder have their paths adjusted.
9. Files are renamed. If the rename failed, a second attempt is made by adjusting the constructed filenames with the (IfDup),(endIf) portion of the template.

Additional information can be found in:

Rename Replacements

Rename Exceptions

Alphabetic Case Transformations

The Rename Template Editor