Change filename to = title

I’ve import hundred of documents from the web. I love EF’s ‘F1’ fast import. When I subsequently renamed them in EF (cause web files typically have useless names like a129384.pdf), I was expecting the obvious: that the file names were being changed too (not just in the EF interface).

I was appalled to see that all my effort was wasted. I spent a bunch of time in the finder hand renaming files - than things when from bad went to worse. Now EF has tons of broken links, cause of corse it references by file name.

Questions:

  1. Why doesn’t Eaglefiler do the obvious and change the name along with the database reference? This is a rather fundamental requirement.
  2. How do I change the file names without breaking links?
  3. How do I fix the broken links?

There are separate columns in EagleFiler’s records list for the Title and the File. If you change the File, that will change the filename in the Finder. The Title is internal to EagleFiler, although it’s often based on the content of the document (e.g. the title of a Web page, PDF, or Word file).

Edit the value in the File column in the records list or the Info inspector. A shortcut for bringing the File column into edit mode is to press Enter.

Or, if you want to make the filenames match the titles, you can use this AppleScript.

Do not rename or move files in the Finder, as that will cause EagleFiler to lose track of them.

You’d need to rename the files in the Finder so that their names once again match what EagleFiler is expecting. When you open the library (or use the Verify command), EagleFiler will report a list of the files that it couldn’t locate, and it will say what filenames it expected.