Ever open a file only to have it launch in the wrong program, or in a program that you don't want to use?
Many file types, especially common video, document, graphics, and audio file types, are supported by many different programs, several of which you may have installed on your computer at the same time.
An Interactive Method to Change Multiple File Extensions At Once Windows 10/8/8.1/7. In present scenario, the users generally prefer to save or store all the precious data on computer. The Win 10 computer is a HP4740 laptop. The other is a desktop asus. When trying to open from the email a window says file type not recognized yet the preview image shows in the email. Once the images are saved to a folder the file type shows up in the file type list and the._jpeg extension can be given an open with option. This is just an example of file extensions, you can use any type of file extension like WAV, MP3, JPG, GIF, bmp, PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT this depends on what your operating system. And, since you have thousands of files, make sure to wait until the cursor starts blinking again indicating that it's done working.
Windows can only open one program for a particular file extension automatically, so if you like to work with your PNG files in Photoshop Elements, for example, and not Paint, then changing the default file association for PNG files is what you need to do.
Follow the easy steps below to change a file type's program association in Windows. Depending on your version of Windows, you'll want to follow the first set of instructions for Windows 10 or the next set for Windows 8, Windows 7, or Windows Vista. Directions for Windows XP are further down the page.
Time Required: It'll take less than five minutes to change the program that's associated with a particular file extension, no matter which Windows operating system you're using or what file type we're talking about.
Setting a program's default file association does not restrict other programs that support the file type from working with them in other situations. More on this at the bottom of the page.
How to Change File Associations in Windows 10
Windows 10 uses Settings instead of Control Panel to make changes to file type associations.
- Right-click the Start button (or hit the WIN+X hotkey) and choose Settings.
- Choose Default apps on the left.
- Scroll down a little and select Choose default apps by file type.
- Locate the file extension you want to change the default program for.If you're not sure what extension the file is using, open File Explorer to find the file and use the View > File name extensions option to show file extensions.
- In the Choose default apps by file type window, select the program to the right of the file extension. If there isn't one listed, select Choose a default instead.
- In the Choose an apppop-up window, pick a new program to associate with that file extension. If there isn't one listed that you want to use, try Look for an app in the Store.
- Windows 10 will now open the program you chose each time you open a file with that extension from File Explorer.
When you're done, you can close any windows you opened to make these changes.
How to Change File Associations in Windows 8, 7, or Vista
- Open Control Panel. In Windows 8, the Power User Menu (WIN+X) is the quickest way. Use the Start menu in Windows 7 or Vista.
- You'll only see this link if you're on the Category or Control Panel Home view of Control Panel. Otherwise, choose Default Programs instead, followed by Associate a file type or protocol with a program link. Skip to Step 4.
- Select Associate a file type or protocol with a program on the following page.
- Once the Set Associations tool loads, which should only take a second or two, scroll down the list until you see the file extension that you want to change the default program for.If you're not sure what extension the file in question has, right-click it (or tap-and-hold) the file, go to Properties, and look for the file extension in the 'Type of file' line of the General tab.
- Choose the Change program button, located just above the scroll bar.
- What you see next, and the next step to take, depend on what version of Windows you're using. See What Version of Windows Do I Have? if you're not sure which set of instructions to follow.Windows 8: From the 'How do you want to open this type of file [file extension]?' window you see now, look through the list and select the program you'd like to open when you double-click or double-tap these types of files. Try More optionsfor the complete list.Windows 7 & Vista: From the 'Open with' window that popped up, look through the programs listed and choose the one you'd like to open for this extension. The Recommended Programs are probably the most applicable, but there may be Other Programs listed, too. Use Browse to manually locate a program.
- Select OK if you see it, and Windows will refresh the list of file associations to show the new default program assigned to this file type. You can close the Set Associations window if you're done making changes.
Change Multiple File Extensions Windows 10
From this point forward, when you double-click or double-tap on any file with this particular file extension, the program you chose to associate with it in Step 8 will automatically launch and load the particular file.
How to Change File Associations in Windows XP
- Go to Start > Control Panel to open Control Panel.
- You'll only see that link if you're using the Category View of Control Panel. If you're instead using the Classic View, choose Folder Options instead and then skip to Step 4.
- Select Folder Options near the bottom of the window.
- Under Registered file types:, scroll down until you find the file extension that you want to change the default program association for.
- Choose the extension to highlight it.
- Select Change in the lower section.
- From the Open With screen that you're now looking at, choose the program you'd like to open the file type with by default.If you don't see that screen, choose Select the program from a list, and then OK.The most common programs that support this particular file type will be listed under the Recommended Programs or Programs list, but there may be other programs that support the file as well, in which case you can manually select one with the Browse button.
- Select OK and then Close back on the Folder Options window. You can also close any Control Panel or Appearance and Themes windows that might still be open.
Going forward, any time you open a file with the extension you chose back on Step 6, the program you chose in Step 8 will be opened automatically and the file will be loaded within that program.
More About Changing File Associations
Changing a program's file association doesn't mean that another supporting program can't open the file, it just means that it won't be the program that opens when you double-tap or double-click on those types of files.
To use another program with the file, you'll just need to start that other program manually first, and then browse your computer for the particular file to open it. For example, you can open Microsoft Word and use its File > Open menu to open a DOC file that is normally associated with OpenOffice Writer, but doing so doesn't actually change the file association for DOC files as explained above.
Also, changing the file association doesn't change the file type. To change the file type is to change the structure of the data so that it can be considered to exist in a different format. Changing the file's type/format is usually done with a file conversion tool.
Got a bunch of files you want to rename, but don’t want to go through them each one by one? Windows provides more ways to do this than you may realize.
You can easily rename one or more files just with Windows Explorer, but you can do even more with the Command Prompt or PowerShell. Add in third-party renaming utilities, and the possibilities are endless. Let’s take a look at each option and how it works.
Rename Multiple Files in Windows Explorer
Windows Explorer (known as File Explorer in Windows 10) is surprisingly powerful. You probably know how to rename a single file, but let’s start with the basics, since the advanced tricks build off them.
If you’re using your mouse, you have no less than three ways to select a file’s name and rename it. You can:
Change Multiple File Extensions At Same Time
- Click to select the file and then click the “Rename” button on the Home menu.
- Click to select file and then click the name of the selected file.
- Right-click the file and then select “Rename” on the context menu.
And if you prefer sticking with your keyboard, you can just use your arrow keys (or start typing the file name) to select a file and then hit F2 to select the file name.
Once you’ve got the file name selected—and you’ll notice only the file name itself is selected, not the extension—you can type a new file name.
When you’re done typing the file name, you can press Enter (or just click somewhere else) to save the new name.
Here’s where things get interesting: you can also hit the Tab key to automatically select the next file name in the folder so that you can immediately begin typing a new name for it. Keep hitting Tab and typing names this way and you can easily rename all the files in a folder if you’re so inclined.
If you’re renaming a bunch of files in the same folder and those files don’t need completely different names from one another, Windows provides an easier way to rename those files in batch. Start by selecting a bunch of files—you can hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple files at once, or Shift to select a range of files. When you’ve got the files selected, use one of the rename commands—the button on the Home menu, the command on the context menu, or just press F2. You’ll see that all the files remain selected, but the first one in the group gets its name highlighted so you can type a new name.
Type a new name for the file and then hit Enter or click somewhere else in the window. All the selected files are renamed using the name you just typed, and are appended with a number in parentheses to differentiate them.
Rename Multiple Files from the Command Prompt
If you need more power than that, you can use the
rename
or ren
command in a Command Prompt window to one or more files. The command accepts wildcard characters like * and ? for matching multiple files, which can be helpful if you only want to rename a certain selection of files in a folder full of many.The quickest way to open a Command Prompt window at your desired location is to first open the folder in File Explorer. From the “File” menu, point to “Open command prompt,” and then select “Open command prompt.”
To rename a single file, you can use the following command syntax:
The quotes are important if your file names contain any spaces. If they don’t, you won’t need the quotes. So, for example, to rename a file from “wordfile (1).docx” to “my word file (01).docx” you would use the following command:
Since the
ren
command can address extensions, you can also use it to change the extensions of multiple files at once. Say, for example, you had a selection of .txt files that you wanted to turn into .html files. You could use the following command along with the * wildcard (which basically tells Windows that text of any length should be considered a match):And while we’re on the subject of wildcards, you can also do some interesting things with the ? wildcard, which is used to stand in for any single character. Say, for example, you had a bunch of .html files that you wanted to turn into .htm files instead. You could use the following command to make the change:
This tells Windows to rename all files with the .html extension to use the same file name and same first three letters only of the file extension, which ends up cutting the “l” off of all the extensions in the folder.
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And this only begins to address the kinds of command line wizardy you can get into if you want to build more complicated commands—or even batch scripts—by weaving other commands and conditionals into things. If you’re interested, the folks over at the Lagmonster forums have an excellent writeup on the subject.
Rename Multiple Files with PowerShell
PowerShell offers even more flexibility for renaming files in a command-line environment. Using PowerShell, you can pipe the output of one command—known as a “commandlet” in PowerShell terms—to another command, just like you can on Linux and other UNIX-like systems. The two important commands you’ll need are
Dir
, which lists the files in the current directory, and Rename-Item
, which renames an item (a file, in this case). Pipe the output of Dir to Rename-Item and you’re in business.The quickest way to open a PowerShell window at your desired location is to first open the folder in File Explorer. From the “File” menu, point to “Open Windows PowerShell,” and then select “Open Windows Powershell.”
First, let’s look at renaming a single file. For that, you would use the following syntax:
So, for example, to rename a file from “wordfile.docx” to “My Word File.docx” you would use the following commandlet:
Easy enough. But the real power in PowerShell comes from the ability to pipe commandlets together and some of the conditional switches supported by the
rename-item
commandlet. Say, for example, we had a bunch of files named “wordfile (1).docx”, “wordfile (2).docx”, and so on.Say we wanted to replace the space in those file names with an underscore so that the file names contain no spaces. We could use the following commandlet:
The
dir
part of that commandlet lists all the files in the folder and pipes them (that’s the |
symbol) to the rename-item
commandlet. The $_.name
part stands in for each of the files getting piped. The -replace
switch indicates that a replacement is going to happen. The rest of the commandlet just signifies that any space ( ' '
) should be replaced by an underscore ( '_'
).And now, our files look the way we want.
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As you might expect, PowerShell offers tremendous power when it comes to naming your files and we’re only scratching the surface here. For example, the
rename-item
commandlet also offers features like a -recurse
switch that can apply the commandlet to files in a folder and all folders nested inside that folder, a -force
switch that can force renaming for files that are locked or otherwise unavailable, and even a -whatif
switch that describes what would happen if the commandlet was executed (without actually executing it). And, of course, you can also build more complicated commandlet structures that even include IF/THEN
logic. You can learn more about PowerShell in general from our Geek School guide, and learn more about the rename-item
commandlet from Microsoft’s TechNet Library.Rename Multiple Files Using a Third Party App
RELATED:Bulk Rename Tool is a Lightweight but Powerful File Renaming Tool
If you need a powerful way to rename multiple files at once and you’re just not up for mastering the Command Prompt or PowerShell commands, you can always turn to a third-party utility. There are countless renaming apps our there—and many of them are good—but we have two clear favorites: Bulk Rename Utility and AdvancedRenamer.
How to Use Bulk Rename Utility
Bulk Rename Utility has a cluttered and somewhat intimidating interface, but it exposes the huge number of options you’d normally only get with regular expressions and complicated command-line options.
After installing the tool, launch it, navigate to the files you want to rename, and select them.
Change options in one or more of the many available panels, and you’ll see a preview of your changes appear in the “New Name” column where your files are listed. In this example, I’ve made changes to four panels, which are now highlighted in orange so it’s easier to tell what I’ve changed. I’ve told the utility to change the name of all files to “Word File” and to use title case. I’ve appended the date the file was created in the YMD format. And I’ve also added an automatic file number that appears at the end of the file name, starts at one, increments by one, and is separated from the file name by an underscore. And that’s only a tiny bit of what you can do with the Bulk Rename Utility. When you’re satisfied with how your new file names will look, all you have to do is click the “Rename” button.
And as you can see, the utility handled my simple requests with ease.
How to Use AdvancedRenamer
Our other favorite renaming tool, AdvancedRenamer, also exposes a huge number of renaming methods, but instead of presenting them all as panels in the interface, it asks that you use a pretty simple but powerful syntax to create renaming methods. It’s not hard to learn and they have good support, along with examples. The tool does sport a much friendlier interface and supports setting up advanced batch jobs so you can combine multiple renaming methods and apply them to large numbers of files. You can also save renaming methods you create for later use.
In the example below, I’ve created a renaming method using the following syntax:
This tells AdvancedRenamer to name all my files “Word File” and to add the creation date in the YMD format (separating each portion by an underscore). It also adds an incremental file number in parentheses and separated by an additional underscore.
And as you can see, my files have been renamed just the way I want. AdvancedRenamer has a bit steeper learning curve than Bulk File Renamer, but the reward for that is that you get much finer control over your file names.
Have other ways to rename files in Windows we haven’t covered? Be sure to leave us a comment and let us know about it.
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