Often you may want to use PowerShell to add a specific prefix to all files in a folder.
You can use the following basic syntax to do so:
(Get-ChildItem -File) | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace '^','new_'}
This particular example adds the prefix new_ to all files in the current directory.
Here is what the various commands do:
- Get-ChildItem -File: Retrieve all files in current directory
- Rename-Item -NewName: Specifies that all files should be renamed
- $_.Name: Gets the existing filename
- -replace: Specifies that the start ( ^ ) of the file should be replaced with new_
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: Use PowerShell to Add Prefix to All Files in Folder
We can use the Dir command to first view all files in our current directory:
We can see that our current directory has the following files:
- athletes.txt
- coaches.txt
- managers.txt
Suppose that we would like to add the prefix new_ to the beginning of each file in our current directory.
We can use the following syntax to do so:
(Get-ChildItem -File) | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace '^','new_'}
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
When we use the Dir command again we can see that the current directory now contains files with the following names:
- new_athletes.txt
- new_coaches.txt
- new_managers.txt
Notice that new_ has been added as a prefix to each file.
Feel free to replace new_ with whatever prefix you would like to add to your own files.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
PowerShell: How to Get File Name from Path
PowerShell: How to Add Date to File Name
PowerShell: How to Delete All Files with Specific Extension
