Note: I’m a beginner to Powershell and a bit more familiar with Bash (though still a beginner for that too).

*I have multiple PDF files and I want to rename each file based on a list of names found in an Excel/CSV (could be a text file if easier) file.

*The list begins at the A2 cell and the A1 cell has the header ‘name’.

*The files are in sequential order and match the order of the list of names.

Thanks for your help!

  • @d3Xt3r
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    23 months ago

    That means there’s a duplicate entry, check the full error message for the file name. You can also use the -Verbose switch to see what’s going on.

      • @d3Xt3r
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        23 months ago

        Ah, I misplaced a quote in my code, I’ve update the post - try version.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          3 months ago

          So it sort of worked in that it outputed a bunch of files with the names but with blank icons and not the Adobe icons. Powershell also had an error for each list item that looked like the following:

          Rename-Item : Cannot bind argument to parameter 'NewName' because it is an empty string.
          At line:1 char:86
          + ... ads\individuals.txt"; $i=0; dir | % { ren $_ "$($names[$i])"; $i++ }
          +                                                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
              + CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (:) [Rename-Item], ParameterBindingValidationException
              + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentValidationErrorEmptyStringNotAllowed,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Rena
             meItemCommand
          

          Maybe the command needs ‘.pdf’ somewhere?

          • @d3Xt3r
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            33 months ago

            Well yeah, you need the full name of the file. PowerShell will not automatically asumme the extension of a file.

            Also that empty string error means there’s a blank line somewhere in your input list, so you’ll need to get rid of that.

            • @[email protected]OP
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              3 months ago

              Just figured it out! Added ‘.pdf’ in the second half of the command.

              $names = cat "\path\to\names.txt"; $i=0; dir | % { ren $_ "$($names[$i]).pdf"; $i++ }
              

              Thanks for all your help!