Powershell Mass Rename files with a excel reference list - powershell

Question

I need help with PowerShell.
I will have to start renaming files in a weekly basis which I will be renaming more than 100 a week or more each with a dynamic name.
The files I want to rename are in a folder name Scans located in the "C: Documents\Scans". And they would be in order, to say time scanned.
I have an excel file located in "C: Documents\Mapping\ New File Name.xlsx.
The workbook has only one sheet and the new names would be in column A with x rows. Like mention above each cell will have different variables.
P Lease make comments on your suggestions so that I may understand what is going on since I'm a new to coding.
Thank you all for your time and help.

Answer 1

Although I agree with Ad Kasenally that it would be easier to use CSV files, here's something that may work for you.
$excelFile = 'C:\Documents\Mapping\New File Name.xlsx'
$scansFolder = 'C:\Documents\Scans'
########################################################
# step 1: get the new filenames from the first column in
# the Excel spreadsheet into an array '$newNames'
########################################################
$excel = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$excel.Visible = $false
$workbook = $excel.Workbooks.Open($excelFile)
$worksheet = $workbook.Worksheets.Item(1)
$newNames = #()
$i = 1
while ($worksheet.Cells.Item($i, 1).Value() -ne $null) {
$newNames += $worksheet.Cells.Item($i, 1).Value()
$i++
}
$excel.Quit
# IMPORTANT: clean-up used Com objects
[System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($worksheet) | Out-Null
[System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($workbook) | Out-Null
[System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($excel) | Out-Null
[System.GC]::Collect()
[System.GC]::WaitForPendingFinalizers()
########################################################
# step 2: rename the 'scan' files
########################################################
$maxItems = $newNames.Count
if ($maxItems) {
$i = 0
Get-ChildItem -Path $scansFolder -File -Filter 'scan*' | # get a list of FileInfo objects in the folder
Sort-Object { [int]($_.BaseName -replace '\D+', '') } | # sort by the numeric part of the filename
Select-Object -First ($maxItems) | # select no more that there are items in the $newNames array
ForEach-Object {
try {
Rename-Item -Path $_.FullName -NewName $newNames[$i] -ErrorAction Stop
Write-Host "File '$($_.Name)' renamed to '$($newNames[$i])'"
$i++
}
catch {
throw
}
}
}
else {
Write-Warning "Could not get any new filenames from the $excelFile file.."
}

Answer 2

You may want to have 2 columns in the excel file:
original file name
target file name
From there you can save the file as a csv.
Use Import-Csv to pull the data into Powershell and a ForEach loop to cycle through each row with a command like move $item.original $item.target.
There are abundant threads describing using import-csv with forEach.
Good luck.