# Hyphens to underscores in folders structure or vice versa



## Parafly (Jul 11, 2012)

Is there any way other than doing each one individually to batch rename folders? I like using the folder structure I have in LR which is simply 

Pictures/YYYY/YYYY_MM_DD/img1.dng, etc. 

Lightroom imports everything as YYYY-MM-DD instead of YYYY_MM_DD

I don't really care which way I use it but I don't feel like renaming all 300+ other folders I have over the years to dashes instead of hyphens


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## bripriuk (Jul 11, 2012)

I don't know if this will work -
Set the 'Date Format' to YYYY/MM/DD, then in Edit>Preferences>File Handling set the 'Treat These Characters as Illegal' to include /, Then 'Replace Illegal Characters' with underscore. It may only work for files and not folders.
Alternatively, and simpler, as you are on Windows you can use the Bulk Rename Facility (a free program) to change _ to - in your existing folders as a batch:

http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Download.php

I'm sure there are equivalent programs for the Mac.

Brian


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## johnbeardy (Jul 11, 2012)

Seriously, I would not use an external renaming utility to rename all those files - not unless you want to lose a lot of your Lightroom work.

I'd resist the urge to tidy things up and would leave existing folders as they are. For future imports, you might edit the translations.txt file.


John


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## clee01l (Jul 11, 2012)

johnbeardy said:


> I'd resist the urge to tidy things up and would leave existing folders as they are.


Some of us are really 'anal' about these things ( I know I was). Eventually, my solution was and is to hide the Folder panel and use a modified version of John's Workflow Smart Collections.  You don't really need the Folder panel in LR excepT for some housekeeping chores unrelated to LR workflow. With the folder panel hidden, folder names that don't match no longer matter and you can focus obsessive/compulsive tendencies toward important stuff like a good keyword scheme and well thought out Titles and Captions.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 11, 2012)

johnbeardy said:


> I'd resist the urge to tidy things up and would leave existing folders as they are.



And I'd be really sad - I'd put a movie on the tv and sit there and do it manually!  

That said, if you don't care which you use, I'd just change LR's future import structure to match the existing one, using the tip John linked to.  Oh, and watch out for curly quotation marks, as that'll make the tip fail.


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