Rename client folders

[richj73]

Hi all

First of all thank you for any help you might be able to offer.

I'm looking at renaming a few hundred customer folders. They are currently formatted [FIRST NAME] [LAST NAME] and I would like to see if there is a way to rename these as [LAST NAME] [FIRST NAME]

Is this possible with macOS 11 itself, or could someone recommend an application which could help (hopefully free)

Thanks again

Edit : files to folders!

 

[MartyByrde]

Couple of questions, along with a "warning" per se:

1. What types of files are these? That is, what application (or applications) was used to create such information?
2. Are you making backups to an external device? If so, what program do you use for that? And how often do you make backups?
3. Form what I can tell, you are using Big Sur. If so, what Mac OS did you upgrade from?
4. Warning: Big Sur is not that stable yet. As it is, V11.1 will be arriving shortly. Hence, that is why a backup is so, so critical (actually no matter what mac OS you use).

 

[richj73]

Couple of questions, along with a "warning" per se:

1. What types of files are these? That is, what application (or applications) was used to create such information?
2. Are you making backups to an external device? If so, what program do you use for that? And how often do you make backups?
3. Form what I can tell, you are using Big Sur. If so, what Mac OS did you upgrade from?
4. Warning: Big Sur is not that stable yet. As it is, V11.1 will be arriving shortly. Hence, that is why a backup is so, so critical (actually no matter what mac OS you use).

Thanks for the reply.

1 Theses are folders.

2 I have them backed up in iCloud/Time Machine and a NAS as well.

3 Not having any issues with Big Sur, clean install

 

[MartyByrde]

Thanks for the reply.

1 Theses are folders.

2 I have them backed up in iCloud/Time Machine and a NAS as well.

3 Not having any issues with Big Sur, clean install

Cool:

This link can help, although I am assuming the same method works with Big Sur:

How to rename a folder on your Mac computer, or rename multiple folders at once

You can rename a folder on a Mac in a few quick steps. Macs allow you to rename one folder at a time or multiple folders at once.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[richj73]

Cool:

This link can help, although I am assuming the same method works with Big Sur:

How to rename a folder on your Mac computer, or rename multiple folders at once

You can rename a folder on a Mac in a few quick steps. Macs allow you to rename one folder at a time or multiple folders at once.

www.businessinsider.com

Thanks, but I don't think that will help. I'm looking at automating the process.

 

[richj73]

Anyone?

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

Not sure a batch tool would work here.

 

[richj73]

Thanks, I've taken a look at this and there is no option to do what I need

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

It’s changing first to surname etc. Looks like an individual process.

 

[richj73]

So what are you saying I would need to do it by hand?

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

No I feel if Automator was given the correct code then maybe that would do the job for you, but I very rarely use it so can’t help there.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Automator or applescript and a bit of shell scripting should do this.

 

[richj73]

Here's a way to do it...

Thank you so much slumber over at talk.automators.fm

IMPORTANT: Backup your customer directories before doing this.

You always want to be able to undo or restore it just in case something does not meet your needs.

This approach just uses built in command line utilities.

Open the terminal app and cd to the directory holding your customer folders. This is a vital step. Make sure you run this command exactly where you need to.

Enter the following line:

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ls -d * | sed -n 's/\(.*\) \(.*\)/mv "\1 \2" "\2 \1"/p' | sh

The first part, before the first pipe, lists the directories.

The second part uses the stream editor (sed) and some regular expressions to build some move (mv) commands. One for each directory.

e.g. mv "john smith" "smith john"

The final part simple shell executes the commands generated.

To see the commands to be executed without executing them just remove the “ | sh” from the end of the command. That’s a good double check before running it.

One useful thing to note is that this renaming, if run a second time, should reverse the effects if all of the folder names were in the correct initial format.

Hope that helps.