Google App Script Snippet: Bulk rename Google Drive files

Photo by Arturo Castaneyra on Unsplash

I ran into an issue yesterday, where I downloaded a bunch of files with another script into my Google Drive. The problem was that the API Key was still added as a query string after the file extension. So none of the files would actually open correctly, due the faulty extension.

I’ve found a few add-ons and Chrome extensions that did a bulk rename, but it wouldn’t have solved my problem.

So I’ve written a little script that renames the files. The cool thing with the script is that you can do some crazy manipulation, because its just using plain old JavaScript.

function renameFiles() {
  var folders = DriveApp.getFoldersByName('[YOUR FOLDER NAME]');
  while (folders.hasNext()) {
    var folder = folders.next();
    var files = folder.getFiles();
    while (files.hasNext()) {
      var file = files.next();
      var fileName = file.getName();
      // This is specific for our scenario.
      // We wanted to remove everything after the extension. 'The ?key='   was after our extension.
      if (fileName.indexOf('?key=') > -1) {
        fileName= fileName.split('?key=')[0];
        file.setName(fileName);
      }
    }
  }
}

Remember to replace [YOUR FOLDER NAME] with your folder name.

Give me a clap if this helped you.