Would i do that so many ways but not manual you already have a great tool for that on your computer get out of the way let me show you okay so pay attention the tool you're gonna use is called.
Power automate for desktop great news is that if you have windows 11 it's already pre-installed for you if you don't have windows 11 but you have office 365 you just go to your office.com account go to.
Power automate and install it from there with power automate for desktop you get to build simple to complex robots this isn't a tool just for programmers it's a tool for noobs and pros so yeah you can.
Use it too once you have it installed just open it up and if you have any existing automations created you're going to see it here you can give your automations cool names.
With the first step so subscribe and stay in touch now if you've never created automations before you're probably going to see a button here that you can click to create a new flow in my.
Case the new flow is up here so i'm going to click that now i can give my flow a name i'm going to call it rename system files power automate is going to start to get things.
Ready for me and we come to this view on the left here i have so many different actions i can choose from under file for example i get the ability to rename files but because my files could be in.
Multiple folders i could go ahead and get the files in the folder first and then rename these before we start with our automation let's take a look at what we need to do so you were trying to.
Rename all of these files manually and you want to add chicago underscore in front of each one so let's go ahead and first grab the files in the folder i'm going to click on this drag and drop it.
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Here and i'm going to get a new pop-up
Where i can specify the folder so let's select it we have a mapped sharepoint folder and we also have a mapped onedrive folder so your files are here.In noob work stuff and system daily data and click on ok then we can also apply filters to include only specific files now since in this case we want to rename all the.
Files in the folder there's no need to add anything for filter will it also work on files and subfolders duh if you turn it on of course it will and actually i've realized that you do.
Have a subfolder here called old data and we have to rename all of these files as well so yeah we are going to turn on include subfolders notice a variable here was produced called files and this.
Was done automatically for you this is just the output of this step and it's going to become relevant in our next step so we are going to save and close this and move on to the next step the.
Next one is to rename the files i'm going to click on this drag and drop it here what file do i want to rename well it's not a specific file it's the output of my previous step so notice that last.
Icon here it says select variable i'm going to click on that and i'm going to see files so let's click it and select it what type of renaming scheme do we want to apply do we want to add text.
Remove text replace text change the extension at date time or add sequential numbers well in this case we want to add text what do we want to add we want to add chicago underscore do we want it.
After the name or before the name in this case before name if the file with that name exists what do we want to happen do we want to overwrite the file or do nothing well i'm going to be on.
The safe side and do nothing now notice
A variable or an output of this step was also produced and if you are gonna have more steps you can reuse this in this case that's our last step we don't.Really need this i'm just gonna deactivate this and click on save and that's it all we had to do was drag and drop make a bunch of selections and we get to rename everything by clicking.
This one button here now let me just bring up my explorer so we can see things happening in real time i'm just gonna snap it here and now let's run this.
We can see all the names updated super fast and if i go to all data all of these has been updated as well imagine having to do this manually no no don't imagine that now if.
This is an automation that you're planning to reuse you can save it you know hr asked me to rename the contracts we have to include the employee name instead of the id do you.
Think you can use your magic tool for this as well but each change is different so probably not of course you can you can make dynamic replacements too we just need a.
Template and we can use the hr master file for that let's go over to your desk let's go over to task quickly so i make sure i understand properly here we have the different contracts they end with.
The employee id we need to replace that id with the employee's name or their initials to get their initials we have an excel file down here which gives us the employee id their name their first.
Initial and the last name the current file name of their contract their manager and so on the information that we need is this one here so we need to get this id and replace it with this.
Name here if we were gonna do this manually we're gonna open this file we're gonna take a look at the explorer we're gonna go to one two six scroll down to find.
One two six and then grab this copy it go here and paste it in.
Right so that's what we're going to do and then we have to repeat that for all of these files no no no we're not going to do that we are going to use power automates i'm just going to press ctrl z.
Here let's set this up really quickly open up power automate and create a new flow give this a name click on create now how do we start what do we need to drag and drop well the way you give.
Instructions to your robot is the same way you would explain the steps to a newbie first thing they need to do is to open up your excel master file so that they can see what is the old id and.
What's the name so we're going to go to the excel section here and launch excel we don't want a blank document we want to open an existing document that document is sitting right here it's in.
The contracts folder all the way down that's what we need click on open and save next step is to go through this file row by row we have data starting from row 2 all the way to row 60 and we.
Need to go through this row by row that's exactly what our robot needs to do as well and check this out there is a loop section here we need to loop through the rows so let's drag and drop.
Loop in our flow we want to start from the second row we're going to stop on row 60 and we want to go one row at a time the variable that's created is loop index this is going to always tell us.
Where inside the loop we're at and that's the way you can reference to each single row we're going to click on save and we get this visual loop added here whatever we want to happen for each.
Single row is going to be added inside this loop well what would a person need to do to be able to make these changes they need three different information they need to know what is the old id.
They need to know what they should replace it with which is this one and they need to know the file name all of this information we have here in the different columns we need to read this.
Information that's what our robot needs to do under excel here we can read from the excel file so we're going to drag and drop this inside the loop which excel file.
Well the same excel file that we opened right here which is reflected with this variable we want to read the value of a single cell the star column is a you can use.
Letters or numbers here and the start row that's not a specific row but that's the row inside our loop so we're going to go and read each single row we're going to use loop index variable here.
Now if i don't change these variables that are produced i'm just going to get dummy variables called excel data excel data 1 2 and so on and i'm not going to know what exactly i'm reading from each.
File so you can change these names yourself you can just click and change so column a has the old id let's rename that and save now i'm doing this because it's going to make things.
Easier later on and you're going to see that in a bit next thing we need to read is the new name that we want to add and that was i believe in column d because column b.
Seems to be hidden there again start row is the loop index and save but no not too fast i should change the variable name so that is easier to reference later on let's go ahead and.
Edit this step and call this new name and save now we're going to read the existing file name that was in column e loop index and let's change this.