Replace Characters

[D Willett]

Hi.
I have a series of folders with a vast amount of documents in various subfolders.
I need to loop through each folder and re name all of the files.
As examples, the current naming of the files resembles the following:

aaa_-_bbb ccc.pdf
aaa b-c-d_-eee.pdf

The two file names above as you can see are quite mismatched with all kinds of variations.
I would like to loop through them and rename them in some kind of normal format, so they would (after renaming) resemble the following instead:

aaa-bbb-ccc.pdf
aaa-b-c-d-eee.pdf

Does anyone have any code that can handle this and remove spaces, underscores etc?

[Rudi]

Hi Dave,

It will be MUCH easier to simply use a renaming app to do this than reinvent the wheel in creating code to do this. There are some really powerful (and free) renaming apps to do this sort of thing. One that I can absolutely recommend is ReNamer.
BTW: Have a look at this screenshot in the above link to illustrate stripping symbols and hyphens and cleaning up names...

ReNamer also provides the ability to rename the contents of multiple folders and even set conditions or explicits on which files to rename or leave alone. I'm sure you'll be able to get the job done quite fast.

Cheers

[D Willett]

What a fantastic find :-)
Thanks Rudi..

[D Willett]

Hi guys.
The utility above has enabled me to change the name to approx 2000 files in a matter of minutes, absolutely brilliant.
Going forward, I need to prevent my users adding files that don't conform to the naming convention.
So if a user enters a name like;

A Panel Off This Car.pdf

Then I want it to be intercepted within the routine and change the spaces to:

A-Panel-Off-This-Car.pdf

Here's my routine:

Code: Select all

Private Sub Command1_Click()

If Me.List1 = "" Then
MsgBox "No Manufacturer Selected", vbInformation, ""
Exit Sub
End If

If Me.List2 = "" Then
MsgBox "No Model Selected", vbInformation, ""
Exit Sub
End If

Dim FN As String
FN = InputBox("Document Name")
FileCopy Me.txtMethDesc.Text, "L:\mmpdf\QuickMethod\" & List1 & "\" & List2 & "\" & FN & ".pdf"
MsgBox "File Transferred", vbInformation, ""
Unload Me
End Sub

I understand the "Replace" function will take care of this but I'm not sure where to include it within my code.

Kind Regards

[Rudi]

Try something like this...

Code: Select all

FileCopy Me.txtMethDesc.Text, "L:\mmpdf\QuickMethod\" & List1 & "\" & List2 & "\" & REPLACE(FN," ","-") & ".pdf"

[HansV]

Below the InputBox line:

Code: Select all

FN = InputBox("Document Name")
FN = Replace(FN, "_-, "-")
FN = Replace(FN, "-_", "-")
FN = Replace(FN, "_", "-")
FN = Replace(FN, " -, "-")
FN = Replace(FN, "- ", "-")
FN = Replace(FN, " ", "-")

[D Willett]

Thanks guys.. I love this site :-)

[Jan Karel Pieterse]

In Hans last post two quotes were missing. Here is the corrected version:

Code: Select all

FN = InputBox("Document Name")
FN = Replace(FN, "_-", "-")
FN = Replace(FN, "-_", "-")
FN = Replace(FN, "_", "-")
FN = Replace(FN, " -", "-")
FN = Replace(FN, "- ", "-")
FN = Replace(FN, " ", "-")

[HansV]

Thank you, Jan Karel!