Dumb Irfanview question

captain custard

captain custard

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Thanks to helpful suggestions here I've rediscovered that Irfanview should do the batch renaming I need to do, but the old brain's struggling with it from the start. We're on Windows 11, btw. So, I downloaded it and I have two icons - Irfanview and Thumbnails, which I don't recall from when we used to use it 10 years ago. Whatever, can somebody please explain to me like I'm a 7 year old how I get the images in a folder displayed as thumbnails which I can then drag and drop into my desired order before doing a batch rename? It's very sad but I can't even work out whether I start from "Irfanview" or "Thumbnails"!
 
Sangoma said:
try this

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOjBRuvNDTQ&t=6s
Click to expand...
Thanks for that Sangoma. Alas my Google-fu is not strong. I can follow that, but what I still can't do is what I need Irfanview to do i.e. let me rename them in a revised order. I can open my folder and drag and drop the images into a new order, but when I go to the batch rename, the files still show in the original order!

I realise that it must be me being thick, but this is driving me nuts ...
 
captain custard said:
but when I go to the batch rename, the files still show in the original order!
Click to expand...
By default, Windows 11 shows files in alpha order - i.e. "a" comes before "b".

You can modifiy this in a File Explorer window, by clicking on the "Sort" button, which will pull down a list of options. However, it seems that you want to show the files in a fixed order and the only way that I'm aware of, is to rename the start of the filenames to provide a key. For example "1, 2, 3" or "a, b, c". Then, leaving the default sorting in place, will achieve what you want.
 
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AndrewFlannigan said:
By default, Windows 11 shows files in alpha order - i.e. "a" comes before "b".

You can modifiy this in a File Explorer window, by clicking on the "Sort" button, which will pull down a list of options. However, it seems that you want to show the files in a fixed order and the only way that I'm aware of, is to rename the start of the filenames to provide a key. For example "1, 2, 3" or "a, b, c". Then, leaving the default sorting in place, will achieve what you want.
Click to expand...
But I'm trying to do this in Irfanview - not in Win11.
 
captain custard said:
But I'm trying to do this in Irfanview - not in Win11.
Click to expand...
But you are using W11, that is what IrfanView is running in.

Irfanview does have some quirks in its file handling, but it should follow windows.

You will have to tell IrfanView to use the new file open layout.
 
Sorry guys, you've lost me. Try as I may, I cannot open a folder of images and drag and drop them into a new order in Win 11 using file explorer. Either I'm missing the obvious, or it's not possible. This is why I need additional software, and it seems that it should be possible to do what I want in Irfanview. My problem now is that I can't fathom out how. To recap, I need to open the folder, drag and drop the images into the required order, then select all and batch rename. I know I can do it in BreezeBrowser, but I can't afford BreezeBrowser.

Edited to add - Problem hopefully solved with the free trial of BreezeBrowser, which makes what I need doing an absolute doddle. If I can't get everything done in a fortnight, I might be back to the Irfanview question, but I do hope not ... :)
 
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What is it you're trying to achieve exactly?

If I'm understanding you correctly Irfanview should be able to do what you want in that it can take photos in a thumbnail view in the order you want and then batch process or rename them. These are the steps needed:

1 - Open the main Irfanview application (not the Thumbnails application) then choose File->Batch Conversion Rename (or press the letter 'b')
2 - On the upper right hand side, click the little icon that looks like a little window with an arrow beside it and choose medium icons, large icons or Extra Large Icons which will set the view to show thumbnails. Alternatively, you can just open your Windows file explorer and drag the files straight from the Windows explorer window into the white space on Irfanview and it will add them. If you drag a large number of files (or add all), they'll be added in the order they're set to in Windows so if you have them set to A->Z they'll be added in alphabetical order, if you set them to be ordered by date they'll be added in date order. You can set the ordering in the Irfanview window by clicking the little Window icon again and choosing details then clicking the column you want to sort by (Name, date etc.) or if you order the files the way you want in Windows and then drag them across, Irfanview will keep the order the same.
3 - Drag files from this window down to the white space at the bottom right labelled Input Files - the order the files will be renamed in will be based on the order they're added to the white box here.
4 - Perform your batch rename operation and you should have the files renamed as you want
 
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