Can Microsoft Power Automate Renaming OneDrive Files?

Microsoft Power Automate is designed to encourage automation and provide tools to automate your everyday tasks. It has a simple, drag and drop interface. It provides automation using easy to create macros. Using Power Automate, you can create a set of rules to perform repetitive tasks in a stipulated manner.

Is Power Automate Free?

Power Automate is a freemium product. It can be used on Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. If you’re looking for premium features like SQL server integration, PDF support, Azure Virtual Machine, your best bet is to subscribe for a monthly plan that charges $15 per user.

Looking for a non-tech solution to rename your files? Use Easy File Renamer (complimentary to CFR) here!

How Does Power Automate Work?

If you’re already familiar with Microsoft Office, you would know about macros. Macros are essentially a set of commands that you group together to automate repetitive tasks. Much like the Microsoft Office macros, Microsoft Power Automate lets you easily record macros.

Renaming OneDrive Files Using Microsoft Power Automate

1. Open Microsoft Power Automate and click the Create button on the left-panel.
2. Select Automated Cloud Flow option.
3. Specify a name for your automated cloud flow (for example, Rename OneDrive files).
4. Select an event when you want to trigger the rename. For example:

• When a new response is submitted
• When an item is created
• When an item is created or modified
• When a file is created in a folder
• When a file is created

1. Click the Create button.
2. Specify the name for the folder where you want to create a new file. For example: “/Documents” (without quotes).
3. You can also configure advanced options by clicking on Show advanced options.
4. Click on Next.
5. Select the option named Move or rename a file using path.
6. In the File Path, select the source file path.
7. In the Destination File Path, specify the target path. For example: /Documents/Weekly Report/formatDateTime(utcNow(),’yyyy-mm-dd’).
8. Set the Overwrite rule. Select Yes if you would like to automatically overwrite any files with the same name.
9. Save your flow.
10. Now sign in to your Microsoft OneDrive account and then click on the Upload icon.
11. Select your saved cloud flow to upload.
12. Once the file is uploaded, open it to run the flow.

Another Method: Using Cloud File Renamer

If you’re a beginner or looking for additional features, your best bet is to use an easy to use solution such as Cloud File Renamer. CFR is a web-based tool. You don’t need to download it. It can be used from any operating system or device.

Features:

• Unlike Microsoft Power Automate, you can rename files on various cloud platforms such as OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Amazon S3.
• Supports 12 file renaming rules. New name, Remove text, Replace text, Trim text, Prefix, Suffix, Numbering, Insert at, Lower case, Upper case, Title case, Swap, etc.
• No command-line or scripting knowledge required.
• You can bulk rename files from the cloud without downloading them.
• Use temporary tokens to safely sign-in to your OneDrive by providing CFR with temporary file access permissions which can be revoked anytime.

Steps:

1. Open the Cloud File Renamer website and create a new account.
2. Click on the Microsoft OneDrive icon.
3. Click on Add New Drive.
4. Sign-in to your OneDrive account.
5. Click on OK or Yes when asked to provide access permissions.
6. On the left-hand side panel, select the folder(s) that contain the files you want to rename.
7. Click the Load Files button.
8. Click on Select Files > Select All.
9. It will automatically select all the files for renaming.
10. Specify a renaming rule from the left panel. For example: Insert At. Type in a text you want to insert into the file names and add the rule.
11. You can add multiple rules of your choice. A preview of the same will be displayed in the files list.
12. Once you’re ready to rename the files, click the Rename button to initiate the renaming.