Using Powershell to Rename Files in Bulk

Question

Using Powershell to Rename Files in Bulk

Shane 1

I have hundreds of files that I'm wanting to rename using a Powershell script.

The files names are currently in this format: Data Extract Q2 AL.csv

I'm wanting to rename the files in the following format: 1234-AL-5-2Q21-Data.csv

All the quarters would all be in 2021 and the 5 just needs to be in the name of every file.

The 4 digit number is the issue that I'm having. Every state has a unique 4 digit number that matches the state that I need in the name of the file. I have an excel file that has the table with the states and their respective number, but I don't have the first clue of how to incorporate this into Powershell. Would this be more of a VBA problem?

Thank you

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Answer 1

The easiest way to do this (and probably the fastest) would be to construct a hash using the state abbreviation as the key and the state code as the value.

Getting the data from an Excel file is easy if you install the ImportExcel module (available here: 7.1.0

Here's an example:

$h = @{}  
$states = Import-Excel C:\junk\art.xlsx  
# build a hash table  
$states |  
    ForEach-Object{  
        $h[$_.State] = $_.Code  
    }  
# get the file names  
# .  
# .  
# .  
# .  
# assume that $StateName has been loaded with the name of a state  
$StateName = "CO"  
$StateCode = ""  
if ($h.ContainsKey($StateName)){  
    $StateCode = $h.$StateName  
}  
else {  
    Write-Host "Oops! There's no state named $StateName in the spreadsheet!!!" -ForegroundColor Yellow  
}  
Write-Host "Code for state " $StateName " is " $StateCode

The spreadsheet in the example is just a simple one:

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Using Powershell to Rename Files in Bulk

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