Is there a way to automatically re-name files in Google Drive?
ie. the original video filename is 2202-28-09-name-1234.mp4 and I have 100 more like that with various file names. I want to name them Video_001, Video_002 and so on.
I looked at q+a and in the zap creation and didn’t see this option, but it’s got to be available, right? Thanks in advance!!
Hi
It sounds like you have a number of existing files that you want to rename, as opposed to wanting to change the name of new files coming in, is that right?
Zapier really shines when you want to create workflows like ‘when this happens in app a, do that in app b’ and it’s harder to work with existing information. We do now have Transfer, which can help you to process existing data, but Google Drive isn’t one of the apps that you can use to trigger a Transfer, so it wont work in this case. There also isn’t currently an action to rename files in Google Drive, sorry about that.
That said, here’s a workaround that you could use:
Google Drive - Updated file
Storage by Zapier - increment value
Google Drive - Copy file
When you copy the files, you can rename them, so you could add your new name then. The Storage step allows you to add 1 to a value each time that the Zap runs, so that will allow you to name the files video 1, video 2, etc. You can learn more about using that storage action in this help guide.
As you can probably tell, there are a couple of caveats for this Zap. The first is that you will need to be able to update all of the files somehow, I think that moving them all to a new folder (the one that the Zap is watching for updated files) should work, but I’ve not tried that myself. The second is that the Zap will copy all of the files, so you’ll need to then go in and delete the originals.
I’m sorry that’s a very clean way of doing things, but do you think it’ll work for you?
Thanks!
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