A file renaming trick for iViewMedia Pro

Category: Mac, Category: iView Media Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 19 March 2004

Summary: How to strip things from file names in iView Media Pro (v. 1.5.6).

I had a large number of files with file names of this form: 25_1_101-150.pdf. I wanted to removed everything after the dash (in this case "150"). Yes, I could probably do it with Applescript. But there was an easier way. I did it with my favourite image cataloguing workhorse, iView Media Pro (yes, it works with pdf files). Here's how I did it.

To remove the -150 part of a large number of files of this type, even if the number of characters after the "-" varies, do the following.

iView Media Pro

Select all of the files to be altered

Use Action: Batch Rename... for the three following actions

Replace String "." with nothing

Replace String "-" with "."

(Now, the above file looks like 25_1_101.150pdf)

Convert, select Strip PC extensions

(This conveniently removes any small length of text after and including the ".")

Now, Add String ".pdf", trailing.

Voilá.

Let's see iPhoto do that!