Not only does this make organizing messy and recognizing files belonging together less intuitive, it is also an issue with my video player for instance as it will list the filenames with parenthesis before the one without, when it should be the first part of a video collection.
Is there a way to solve this?
There's another related issue also: when in details mode for instance and you select multiple files from top to bottom, if it's a single consecutive selection, when you press F2 it will go to rename the first file at the top of the list (as it should) ; however if your selection is non consecutive (eg, selecting file 1, file 3, file 5 with ctrl+left click), the renaming input will focus on the last clicked item at the bottom instead of the first at the top. So the file at the bottom would get renamed as the first file instead of the last. Again, is there a solution for this?
I am testing directory opus with the intent to purchase a licence and I am really impressed with many aspects and advanced features but I don't understand why something as basic as file renaming is giving me such a headache.
You can make a button, hotkey and/or rename preset which does the same thing, including inserting the current date (if that's what you want), with a single click and no additional typing or dialogs.
Or you can make it prompt you for additional details (like the "File" prefix), if that's needed.
In terms of the inline rename method you were using, it names the first file exactly as you specify it, then numbers the others. If you name the first file File 2021-09-20 (1) then it'll keep that name, and the next one will be named File 2021-09-20 (2), and so on, similar to what Explorer does.
Inline rename is done on the item that has focus (and then the rest are renamed as well, if that is turned on in preferences). That's usually the last item that was clicked, but you can move focus around with ctrl + up/down.
I really wish those 2 default behaviors would have an option to toggle somewhere... I find both illogical, especially for something as common and basic as renaming; and the proposed workarounds are cumbersome. No one wants to have to manually type and append (1) at the end of every renaming, or to play around with changing selection if dealing with hundreds of files, when it should simply follow the column sorted order.
I love the advanced renamer tool but inline renaming as its place too and deserves more suitable functions. It's faster, neater, has useful shortcuts to re-apply previously used names, doesn't occupy screen space, you can just "click out" or scroll to escape, etc.
That triggered the idea "how to add (1)" at the beginning of a renaming function, and ended up on an old button of yours from 2007 I ended up tweaking a bit. Using a dialog box that auto-inserts the name of the first selected file, and will number all the files sequentially like explorer, while keeping the column sort order.