Pictures in Documents

[Nino Cartagena]

I am new to Windows Vista. I am having the hardest time trying to catagorize
& rename my pictures. Everytime I go to a picture file in my document files,
I highlight the pictures that I want to rename. Then when I click rename &
type the name of the pics that I want labeled, it scrambles the pictures in a
different order & the numbers of the pics are pic 1, pic 1, pic 2, pic 2,
etc, etc. Please help

 

[Bob]

Hi Nino
Your question is not clear. Do you have pictures combined with other types
of files in the same folder?

It would be helpful if you gave an example with more details.

 

[Nino Cartagena]

I have a folder with about 200 pictures. If I try to add like 10 more
pictures to the folder, instead of individually renameing each picture, I try
to, with the mouser, highlight all of the pictures, then right click, and
click "RENAME." When I go to the first picture, I will type: Scenic (1) then
ENTER. Then all of the pictures will be scrambled out of order, and the
pictures are labled: (Scenic 1, Scenic1, Scenic 2, Scenic 2, Scenic 3, Scenic
3, etc. I'm used to the older Windows XP Home edition, where all you had to
do was go to a file in the documents, pick the files or pictures that you
wanted to rename, go to the first picture, type in the name, and that it
would label & number the pic for you without scrambling the files out of
order.

 

[Bob]

If you click on the "date taken" column header after you rename the photos
the sort order will revert back to chronological order by date taken without
regard for the name of the file. You can toggle between ascending or
descending order each time you click the header.
Is that what you want?

 

[Nino Cartagena]

No, this is not working. Like I said, everytime I try to rename the pics,
they become scrambled. And the "date taken" option that you spoke of is not
avaiable in the folder that is a "COPY"

 

[Bob]

It doesn't matter if the folder is the "original" or a "copy".

Right click the "Name" header and choose "Date Taken".

 

[Dave]

They "scramble" because you have them sorted by Name.
Vista allows you to add whatever columns you want to see.

Assuming you're using Windows Explorer,
Right-click on the "Name" column header, select "More...", select "Date
Taken"

 

[Nino Cartagena]

Thanks Bob. I was able to execute the "date taken option." However, I am
unsuccessful in catagorizing my pictures. The pictures still keep scrambling
in a different order, and the renaming process has been scrambled also. All
I'm simply trying to do is rename the pictures in a file without the pictures
or the names becoming scrambled.

 

[Nino Cartagena]

Dave, buddy, I'm using Windows Vista. This method is unsuccessful

 

[Nino Cartagena]

I am new to Windows Vista. I am having the hardest time trying to catagorize
& rename my pictures. Everytime I go to a picture file in my document files,
I highlight the pictures that I want to rename. Then when I click rename &
type the name of the pics that I want labeled, it scrambles the pictures in a
different order & the numbers of the pics are pic 1, pic 1, pic 2, pic 2,
etc, etc. Please help

 

[Jeff Richards]

You have two different file types in the folder. If you can't see that you
have two different file types in the folder, right click the Name header bar
and choose More... then tick the Type detail item. This will enable you to
see the type, and also to then sort by type.

The renaming will work through the files in the order in which they are
displayed (I assume you have now got them displayed in the order in which
you want them to be named) but when it gets to a file of a different type,
it starts the renaming over from the beginning for that other file type.
Therefore instead of having (say) all your GIFs first and your JPGs second,
they will be interleaved (GIF/JPG GIF/JPG etc) with the same name.

Move the GIFs (or whatever) into one folder, make sure they are sorted by
date taken (or whatever is the 'proper' order) and rename them. Move the
JPGs (or whatever) into another folder, get them into proper sequence, and
rename them starting with the next sequential number. Move them both back
to the original folder. That assumes you want all the GIFs first and all the
JPGs second (in this example)

If the dates of the files overlap, choose a starting number for the second
(later) group that inserts the first one of that group into the sequence at
the right spot. As the files are different types, there will not be a clash
of file names.

It's possible to do the same thing in one folder by selecting files of one
type only - the principle is the same. I would prefer to use separate
temporary sorting folders, as it makes fixing errors much easier.

 

[Bob]

Did you click the "date taken" header?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Nino.

Have you changed Vista's default Folder Options? By default, it is set to
Hide extensions for known file types. This makes it very easy to get into
the kind of situation that Jeff Richards explained above.

You might have pictures named Sue.jpg and Sue.gif; with extensions hidden,
you will simply see two picture files, both named Sue. When you rename to
add numbers, you might see two files both named Sue1. And if you also had 2
files named Pat.jpg and Pat.gif, they might end up as you said: Sue1, Pat1,
Sue2, Pat2, when they really are Sue1.gif, Pat1,gif, Sue2.jpg, Pat2.jpg. Or
you might see Sue1, Sue2, Pat1, Pat2; without extensions, you don't really
know what you have.

Click Start | Control Panel | Folder Options | View and be sure to remove
the check from that "Hide extensions..." line. Then have another look at
your pictures folder in Windows Explorer.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1)

 

[Jeff Richards]

Sigh. You can't, of course, force the renaming to continue on from an
arbitrary starting number. There are file rename utilities available that
can do this for you. A work around is to create a number of temporary dummy
files (of the correct type) but that's getting a bit complicated.

It would be preferable to arrange for all files that you want renamed
sequentially within one folder to be of the same type. A graphics
conversion utility would be able to do a bulk conversion of one type to
another.

Or. find a rename utility that provides suitable options.