How to mark those with "Date Taken"

Greetings... new user here.

I have a folder with about 2000 images. Some have EXIF data containing "Date Taken." Others don't. I'd like to rename all those with a "Date Taken" using that data for the filename, and I want to leave the other files untouched ... I plan to rename those separately.

I successfully added the Date Taken column to the view; no problem there. My plan was to select all those with a value in the Date Taken field, mark them, and proceed with the renaming. However, I see no easy way to group all those with "Date Taken" together. I figured that sorting by "Date Taken" would group all the "nulls" either at the top or the bottom, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

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On a second note, I'd like to set it up so that if I have two pictures with identical "Date Taken" times (down to the second), then it will number them sequentially as needed.

In other words, if <ExifTool:DateTimeOriginal> yields three files with identical filenames, then the filenames of the second and third will be suffixed with -1 and -2.

I'm open to other solutions, of course.

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All help appreciated.

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Reply to #1:

Hi Neal

For your first problem you need to use a script and access the EXIF data using item.exifToolValue(). If the EXIF field doesn't exist then it will return a null value which you can use in an IF statement so as only to rename files where the date field exists - eg:

name$ = item.name;
str$ = item.exifToolValue("DateTimeOriginal");
if (str$) name$ = str$;
return name$;

To solve your second problem simply click on the "Name collision rule" drop down (on the bar above the filename list) and change the rule from "Fail" to "Append number". Once you have done this you can also change the Separator from _ to -. It doesn't quite format as you wish - for three identical renamed filenames ARen will append -001, -002 & -003. However, once you have the new names you can always use another method to change the numbering, should you wish.

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Reply to #2:
I'll give this a shot... I've never used a script in conjunction with the renaming tool, but I'll try it.

The "Name Collision rule" seems simple enough.

Many thanks!

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