Renaming files and folders with meaningful names ensures that they can be easily identified, organized, accessed, and maintained. If you own a digital camera, scanner or video camera, you'll notice that images or video files acquired from these devices have cryptic file names (e.g. DCP001 for digital cameras, Img001 for scanned files, Video001 for video files). Renaming these files will make it easier for you to remember what they represent.

Photo Explorer's Auto Rename tool allows you to batch rename multiple files (or folders) in a number of ways, and this tutorial shows you one of the approaches of auto renaming files. Before you begin, prepare some files and folders to practice with. As an example, this tutorial uses a folder named Folder 01, and the file names are sequenced from DCP_2106.jpg up to DCP_2112.jpg. This tutorial shows how to rename the image files to indicate their content, start their numbering from '001', and change the number of digits allotted for sequential numbers.

1. In the Folder Tree, select the folder containing the files you want to rename. Select images in the Browse Pane.
   
   Select a range of files by clicking on the first file, then holding the [Shift] key down as you click on the last file; or select several individual files by clicking on the first file, then holding [Ctrl] down as you click on additional files.