You don’t have to rename files individually if you want them all to have more-or-less the same name
I’ve recently been transferring TV programs that I have recorded from DVDs to a Seagate “NAS” drive. “NAS” means “Network attached storage”. At its simplest, this is an external hard drive that connects to the router so that all computers on the network can access it. It also, however, acts as a “media streamer”. In other words, it can deliver content stored on it to (for instance) a Smart TV.
This transfer means that I’m going to end up with loads of files on the NAS drive with similar names. As an example, there were eight episodes in the series “The Planets”. In transferring them to the NAS drive I have put them all in a folder called (natch) “The Planets”. The filenames they started off with are shown in Figure 1. If this setup is replicated with many other series of videos, then I’m going to end up with loads of files called “1DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER.MP4” etc. Admittedly they will be separated into folders that are more meaningfully named, but I’m odd enough to want things better organised than that.
So, how do you rename files without doing them all individually?

Figure 1
Then right-click on the first file and left-click on the rename option (see Figure 2). This is exactly the same as if you were renaming a single file (except that you can see that there are other files that are highlighted). Go ahead and rename the file and then, as normal, hit the “enter” key.

Figure 2

Figure 3
And in case you hadn’t realised it, sorting files by different columns (eg filename, date modified) is easy: just click on the column header itself (eg “Name” above the actual file names). Click on the column header again to sort it in the other direction (A-Z or Z-A etc).
This renaming works for at least Windows 7 onwards. If you are using anything older, then it’s time to think about updating (particularly if you are still using XP!!!)
Next time I will look at how you rename multiple files on a Mac. It’s more sophisticated than on a PC.