When you go back to your hard drive, close the folder and open it again. You
will see that your new order is lost, you are back to the old one. This is
because XP will list the files in numerical/alphabetical order and will copy
them to the CD in that order, not the order you have them using drag and
drop.
However, you can rename them, once you have them in the order you want.
Renaming is easy to do with XP.
If you need to batch rename, you can do this easily with XP.
Copy the photos to a new folder.
Open the new folder. Hold the Ctrl key down and press the letter A. This
will select (highlight in blue) all the files in the folder.
Right click on the first file (important to right click on the first file
because renaming will start from there).
Click on Rename on the opening menu.
Type in the name you want, to replace the current name. Any system will
work, such as year, month, event. For example type in:
2003_09_Virginia Beach Vacation (1).jpg
and press Enter.
XP will automatically rename all the files (1), (2), (3), etc. and they will
open in the order (1), (2), (3), etc.
Two important things when renaming using the above method.
1. Look at the name of the above file, you must include a space between the
last character of the file name and (1)
2. When you rename, don't forget to add .jpg after (1). If you forget, XP
will warn you, so enter .jpg after this warning. If you don't, you will not
be able to open the file. If you still do not enter .jpg after the warning,
don't worry. Rename again and enter .jpg
You can rename any time and as many times as you want. You are not dependent
on the camera wizard to rename.
You can rename portions of files in a folder, just select the group you want
and right click on the first one and rename from there.
You can do even better than this. Suppose you want a slide show and you want
the last three pictures taken to be the first three or in between some other
photos. Easy to do. Open the folder in thumbnail view, use your mouse to
place them in the order you want. Select all the photos and rename. The (1),
(2), (3), etc will be added in the order you placed the thumbnails.
Convenient if you want to make a slide show of pictures from different
folders. Just make a new folder, copy the photos you want in the new folder,
place the thumbnails in the order you want and rename.
You are not restricted to only one name and you can control the order in
which each group will open, by placing a number up front of the file name
for each group. You may have photos of Christmas, Easter, New Year etc. and
of different years. Once you have the thumbnails in the order you want,
select the first group, right click on the first thumbnail in the group and
rename:
1_2002 Easter (1).jpg
Then select the second group and rename
2_2002 Christmas (1).jpg
Placing 1_, 2_, etc in front will control the order of each group and (1)
controls the order within each group.
If you want to add another group later and you want these photos to be, say
between 1_ and 2_, use 1a_ in front of the file name.
You may also want to add some more photos in a particular group, say your
Christmas group. No problem. Copy the files in the folder, move the
thumbnails in the group you want to add them to. Select all the thumbnails
in the group, right click on the first one and rename. When you rename, you
must change the name in order for rename to take place. Add something like
XYZ after Christmas. Once renaming is done, select the same files again and
rename again. Remove the XYZ and you will be back to the original name.
Note: There is a disadvantage to changing the original name of files. This
is why I recommend at the start to make a new folder and copy your original
files in the new folder before renaming. The disadvantage is this. Many have
the option of video out from the camera to display the pictures from the
memory card to a TV for a slide show. If you change the file names and copy
the files back to your memory card to display on your TV (or even to just
look at them on the LCD of the camera) your camera will not be able to read
the files. You can always rename, using the same format (8 characters) that
your camera uses, but now you have to rename each file. So, be careful what
you do with your original files.
Note: Although I recommend making a new folder and copying your files there
before renaming, there is also another way to do this and you may prefer
this once you are comfortable with renaming. Here is how to do it.
Open the folder to see your files. Hold the Ctrl key down and press the
letter A to select (highlight in blue) all the files. Hold the Ctrl key down
and press the letter C. This makes a copy of all the files to your
clipboard. Hold the Ctrl key down and press the letter V. This copies
(pastes) all the files back in your folder. The file names will be the same,
but the words "Copy of" will be in front of the file names. You then rename
Copy of files.
This way your original files and renamed files are in the same folder.
This is also very useful when you want to edit a photo with software. You
always edit "Copy of", never edit your original file.
