Powershell Clean up Folder Names - Rename Folders and Subfolders Recursively

Hi friends,

I hope I have posted this in the correct forum.

I am trying to rename folders and subfolders.

I am cleaning up the folders names first removing junk spaces and things I don’t want.

I am really stuck on renaming the folders.

However I may be making some newbie mistakes

After looking at this code all day I have code blindness.

Various tests gave me these types of errors

Folder doesn’t exists

Access denied

Source and destination must be different

$Source_Folder='C:\Users\Dan\Desktop\Test'

$folders = Get-ChildItem -Directory -Recurse $Source_Folder
#$folders                      # display on screen




Foreach ($folder in $folders)
{
    

    $new_folder_name = $folder.Name
    
    # Remove Characters
    $new_folder_name = $new_folder_name -replace '#', ' '
 
    # Remove Hyphen with _
    $new_folder_name = $new_folder_name -replace '-', '_'
	
	# and some more replacesments......

     # Rename the Folders
    $new_folder_path = ($folder.DirectoryName + "\" + $new_folder_name)

    Write-Host "Renaming:" $folder.FullName "to" $new_folder_path

    Rename-Item $folder.FullName $new_folder_path


}

Please may some one point me in the right direction

Thank you so much

Windows PowerShell

Harm_Veenstra

Aug 23, 2022

Dan_CS It's the special characters, if you replace @ with at for example, it does work for me

$Source_Folder = 'd:\temp\Test'
$folders = Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $Source_Folder -Directory 
Foreach ($folder in $folders) {  
    $new_folder_name = $folder.Name
    
    # Remove Characters
    $new_folder_name = $new_folder_name -replace '#', ' '
 
    # Remove Hyphen with _
    $new_folder_name = $new_folder_name -replace '-', '_'

    # Remove @ with at
    $new_folder_name = $new_folder_name -replace '@', 'at'
	
    # and some more replacements......

    Write-Host "Renaming:" $folder.FullName "to" $new_folder_name
    Rename-Item "$($folder.FullName)" "$($new_folder_name)" -Verbose
}

10 Replies

Harm_Veenstra
MVP
Aug 23, 2022
Dan_CS I changed it a little for you, the target path shouldn't be in full name, just the directory name

$Source_Folder = 'd:\temp\Test' $folders = Get-ChildItem -Directory -Recurse $Source_Folder Foreach ($folder in $folders) { $new_folder_name = $folder.Name # Remove Characters $new_folder_name = $new_folder_name -replace '#', ' ' # Remove Hyphen with _ $new_folder_name = $new_folder_name -replace '-', '_' # and some more replacements...... Write-Host "Renaming:" $folder.FullName "to" $new_folder_name Rename-Item "$($folder.FullName)" "$($new_folder_name)" }
- Dan_CS
  Copper Contributor
  Aug 23, 2022
  Harm_Veenstra
  
  Hello Harm,
  thank you for your help.
  It did rename some folders but some I get errors like below
  
  Rename-Item : Source and destination path must be different.
  At C:\Users\Dan\Desktop\FORUM Folder.ps1:44 char:5
  + Rename-Item $($folder.FullName) $($new_folder_name)
  
  Also another error folder does not exist.
  
  I will keep trying and testing
  
  Thank you
  - Harm_Veenstra
    MVP
    Aug 23, 2022
    Ok, but what is the source en destination at that moment? What's the output from line 14? (Write-Host "Renaming"...

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Powershell Clean up Folder Names - Rename Folders and Subfolders Recursively

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